Independence was the result of a plan carefully arranged by José Bonifacio and his Brazilian associates. Pedro had declared himself emperor in an access of dramatic enthusiasm. He wanted the glory of founding a great empire and he loved to think of his name as that of the first legitimate monarch who was really self-abnegating enough to establish constitutional government of his own free will. The rôle of a Washington, with the added glory of unselfishly resigning absolute power, appealed to his boyish vanity. But the cold fit came on when he undertook to perform his promises. His loud protestations of constitutionalism turned out to be mere windy mouthings. Though his reign largely assisted in maintaining Brazil's territorial unity, it cut off the promise of local self-government and helped bring on twenty years of bloody revolts. He was not exactly a hypocrite; he loved to hear sonorous periods about liberty rolling out of his mouth, but he had no idea of what they really meant.
José Bonifacio and his brothers remained at the head of affairs when independence was declared, but, ardent and successful as the older Andrada had been in that movement, he proved no statesman, and had not the strength to oppose his wilful young master. Almost immediately the Andradas engaged in bitter quarrels with the other leaders of the independence party, and summarily banished the five ablest advocates of a liberal constitution. They used their power to revenge themselves on their personal enemies, their secret police was worse than anything John had maintained, and they forcibly suppressed the newspapers which dared criticise their acts. Pedro's authority was accepted slowly outside of Rio. The ties binding the northern provinces to him were especially feeble. A constituent assembly had been summoned, but great difficulty was experienced in securing a full representation. Pernambuco and the neighbouring provinces hesitated long before consenting to have anything to do with it, and Pará, Maranhão, and Piauhy were never represented. It finally met in May, 1823, with only fifty out of the one hundred members in their seats. The Emperor opened the session with an arrogant and dictatorial speech. "I promise to adopt and defend the constitution which you may frame if it should be worthy of Brazil and myself. We need a constitution that will be an insurmountable barrier against any invasion of the imperial prerogatives." Such language excited an unexpected protest even among the members of this humble and inexperienced assembly. Though a majority were magistrates, they were not without a sense of the dignity of their functions as legislators, and were eager for liberty—a liberty interpreted according to their own undigested theories.
The Andradas bitterly attacked those who dared protest against the Emperor's language, and a majority was only obtained for the government programme by the lavish distribution of decorations. Pedro soon tired of the Andradas and their fiercely anti-Portuguese policy, and summarily dismissed them. The disgraced ministers passed at once into the most virulent opposition, and they inflamed popular prejudice against the resident Portuguese and aroused fears that the Emperor was plotting a reunion of Brazil with Portugal. As the session went on, the assembly showed a more independent spirit, and Pedro became more and more irritated. The Brazilian newspapers insulted his Portuguese officers and the assembly took the part of the former. In November matters reached a crisis. Pedro drew up his troops in front of the assembly's meeting-house and demanded immediate satisfaction to the insulted officers and the expulsion of the Andradas. The answer was a brave refusal, but against his cannon nothing availed. He sent up an order for an instant and unconditional dissolution, and, arresting the Andradas and other Liberals as they came out of the building, deported them on board ship without the formality of charge or trial.
Pedro ordered a paper constitution to be drawn up by his ministers. In form it was liberal, but he had no serious intention of putting it in force.
Even in Rio, the people ignored the invitation to give their formal adhesion to this delusive document. A show of acceptance was sought to be obtained from the provinces by going through the form of submitting it to the municipal councils. These councils were then close corporations, largely self-elective, and dominated by the bureaucratic caste, but even so, north of Bahia they paid no attention to the Emperor's communication, and in the South some members had to be imprisoned before their consent could be extorted. The Emperor swore to the constitution, and it was gravely promulgated as the nation's fundamental law, but no congress was summoned, as a matter of fact the government continued a pure despotism wherever the Emperor's power extended. The press, which had sprung into existence during the agitation for independence, and which, after having been throttled by the Andradas, had partly revived during the session of the constituent assembly was now definitely suppressed. Taxes were levied on the sole authority of the monarch; laws were put into force without other sanction than his will; citizens were arbitrarily banished, and military tribunals condemned civilians to death in time of peace.
We can never know the extent of the shock felt by the Liberals on hearing of the forcible dissolution of the constituent assembly. In Pernambuco it was one of the stimulating causes of a rebellion. In that city the press had not been suppressed and the spirit of 1817 was still alive. A strong separatist feeling existed, and when the junta resigned, the popularchoice made Carvalho Paes, who had been engaged in the former rebellion, governor. The Emperor sent up his own man, but authorities and people refused to recognise him. An open breach followed, and Pedro, with his usual vigour, undertook to establish his dominion over the hitherto aloof North.
In July, 1824, the Pernambucanos threw down the gauntlet by proclaiming the "Confederation of the Equator." This was intended to be a federal republic after the model of the union between the provinces of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. The adhesion of Pernambuco, Parahyba, Rio Grande do Norte, and Ceará could be counted upon, and that of Maranhão, Pará, and Bahia was hoped for. Bahia, however, remained apathetic, and that city furnished Pedro a convenient base for his operations. He sent Admiral Cochrane to blockade and bombard Pernambuco, while an army marched up the coast. Factional civil war had broken out in the interior of the revolted provinces, and the imperial forces were joined by Carvalho's local enemies. The patriots fought desperately, but were overwhelmed before they could provide themselves with arms or organise their resistance. The city had to surrender on the 17th of September, though fighting was kept up for a long time in the interior. Cochrane sailed north, reducing the ports one by one, and by the end of the year the serious resistance was at an end.
The victorious Emperor punished the patriots with ruthless severity, sending many of the leaders to the scaffold, and establishing military tribunals which inaugurated a reign of terror. An Englishmannamed Ratcliff was brought to Rio and hanged, not so much for his part in the insurrection as because he had once offended Pedro's mother in Portugal. "She offered a reward for his head," said the Emperor as he signed the death-warrant, "but now she shall have it for nothing." In the spring of 1825 it seemed as if Pedro was certain to establish himself at the head of a military despotism extending from the Amazon to the Plate. Before the Pernambuco insurrection his revenue and recruits had been drawn solely from Rio and the adjacent provinces. Now his fleet and disciplined army, recruited by impressment and concentrated under his eye, enabled him to get revenue from all the ports and to hold the provinces in check. His sea-power and his possession of the purse-strings gave him a tremendous advantage. He imported Germans, Swiss, and Irish with a view to forming a corps of janizaries. All Brazil seemed submissive, and the enthusiasm which had flamed out among the Brazilians in 1821 and 1822 had died down, leaving as its only permanent effect a strong sentiment against reunion with Portugal.
Externally his position seemed secure. He was assured of Canning's active support in securing formal recognition as an independent monarch; Portugal was helpless; though his application for a defensive and offensive alliance had been refused by Henry Clay, the United States was the first to recognise Brazil's independence; even the Holy Alliance had little objection to an independent American state ruled by a legitimate monarch. In the summer of 1825 a treaty of peace was framedbetween Portugal and Brazil through the intermediation of England. Independence was formally recognised, but Pedro made the error of consenting that his father should take the honorary title of Emperor of Brazil, and by a secret article he pledged Brazil to assume ten millions of the Portuguese debt, though it had been incurred in war against herself.
In March, 1825, a rebellion against Pedro broke out in Uruguay, and the Argentine gauchos swarmed over the border. The Brazilians easily held the fortified city of Montevideo, but the Spanish-Americans were successful in the open field, and after six months of harassing fighting caught the imperial army in a disadvantageous position and cut it to pieces in the decisive battle of Sarandy. The Buenos Aires government at once gave notice that it must recognise that Uruguay had reunited itself to the Argentine, and Pedro responded with a declaration of war and a blockade.
The preparations for war involved him in unprecedented expenditures, which piled up the debt already accumulated in his father's time and added to by the war of independence and the suppression of the "Confederation of the Equator." He decided to call together the representatives of the people and insist that they bear a share of the responsibility. So little interest was taken that it was hard to hold the elections, and the members had to be urged to present themselves. On the 3rd of May, 1826, the first Brazilian Congress met. Intended as a mere instrument to furnish supplies for the war, and meeting with the fear of the fate ofthe constituent assembly before its eyes, it hesitatingly began the work of parliamentary government. Except for the revolution of 1889, the sessions have never since been interrupted.
A week before the assembling of Congress the news reached Brazil that King John was dead. Pedro was the eldest son, but his brother Miguel was a candidate for the vacant throne. Pedro had to make an immediate choice between the two crowns. He decided to keep that of Brazil and to transfer that of Portugal to his daughter, Maria Gloria, then a child seven years old. He tried to head off Miguel by making the latter regent and promising that Maria should marry him as soon as she was old enough, while he tied his brother's hands by promulgating a constitution for Portugal. The scheme failed to preserve the peace, and the Portuguese absolutists, supporting Miguel, and the constitutionalists, Maria Gloria, almost immediately became involved in a civil war. During the latter part of Pedro's reign he was continually preoccupied with Portuguese affairs and trying to promote his daughter's fortunes in Europe.
The war on the Plate turned out difficult and disastrous. Notwithstanding that great land forces were sent, no progress was made toward reducing Uruguay to obedience, and the overwhelming naval force blockading Buenos Aires was harassed by a small fleet improvised by an able Irishman—Admiral Brown—in the Argentine service. Fast-sailing Baltimore clippers fitted out as privateers infested the whole Brazilian coast, often venturing in sightof Rio and soon sweeping the coasting trade out of existence. Fruitless attempts to enforce the blockade involved Pedro in difficulties with neutral powers; Brazilian merchants were disgusted with the war, and communication between the provinces became nearly impossible.
The Brazilian land forces in Uruguay were increased to twenty thousand, but the Argentines under General Carlos Alvear audaciously averted the danger of an invasion of their territory by planning and effecting an inroad into Rio Grande itself. The Brazilian general allowed Alvear to slip between his main body and Montevideo, and the latter penetrated to the East, sacked the important town of Bagé, and was off to the North with the whole Brazilian army in hot pursuit. On the 20th of February, 1827, the Argentines turned and attacked the Brazilians at a disadvantage, defeating them with great loss. In this battle of Ituzaingo sixteen thousand men took part, and the armies were nearly equal in numbers. The Brazilians escaped without serious pursuit, while the Argentines retired at their leisure, assured that no aggressive operations would soon be undertaken against them. Pedro's hope of dominance on the south shore of the Plate was ended. Naval disasters suffered at the hands of the indefatigable Brown made him still more anxious for peace. Negotiations were begun with the Argentine government which was only prevented by lack of money and internal factional quarrels from undertaking an aggressive war against Brazilian territory. Operations were kept up languidly on both sides fora year, and finally Pedro in 1828 consented to a preliminary treaty by which he relinquished his sovereignty over Uruguay, obtaining in return Argentine consent that it be erected into an independent country.
The first session of the Brazilian Congress had been very timid and voted as the Emperor desired. The session of 1827 was not so respectful; the news of Ituzaingo had made him seem less formidable. For the first time the chamber became a forum for the discussion of governmental theories, and the voice of Vasconcellos, the great champion of parliamentary government, was heard. In the fall of 1827 independent newspapers began to make their appearance and Pedro dared not interfere with them. The tone of most of them was exaggerated, but in December theAurora Fluminense, with Evaristo da Veiga as editor, issued its first number. By universal consent he is recognised as the most influential journalist who ever wielded a pen in Brazil. His profound and temperate discussions of public affairs gave him an ascendency over opinion which can hardly be understood in countries where party conventions and set speeches give opportunities for authoritatively outlining policies.
EVARISTO FERREIRA DA VEIGA.EVARISTO FERREIRA DA VEIGA.[From a steel engraving.]
When Congress met in May, 1828, the Emperor and his government had completely lost prestige. The public's and Chamber's consciousness of their rights and their power had made a distinct advance. Vasconcellos infused into the debates an independent and statesmanlike spirit not unworthy the great popular assemblies of the most advanced countries. The youth of this remarkable man had been passed in pleasure-seeking, but his election to Congress gave him an object in life commensurate with his great abilities, and he applied himself with unquenchable ardour to the study of political science. Corrupt in morals, inordinate in ambition, his venality notorious, his constitution ruined by disease, his skin withered, his hair grey, and his appearance thatof a man of sixty, though he was but thirty, the spirit within rose superior to all physical and moral defects. His rôle was peculiarly that of champion of the prerogatives of Congress. By his side was Padre Feijó, afterwards regent—incorruptible in morals and unyielding in will—the champion of federation and democracy, and the earliest Brazilian positivist.
This Chamber of 1828 made a real beginning toward making ministries responsible to Congress, and started legal and administrative reforms, but the Emperor insisted that its sole attention be given to increasing taxes. When the Chamber definitely refused in 1829 he dissolved it in the hope that the next might prove more tractable. This act destroyed the last remnants of Pedro's popularity. From that moment his abdication or expulsion was inevitable. His friends tried to create a reaction by organising societies in favour of absolutism, and governors of retrograde principles were appointed, but the popular irritation against him because he was a Portuguese by birth and sympathy constantly grew. Brazil divided into two parties—all the Brazilians belonged to one and only the resident Portuguese to the other. The new Chamber was harder to manage than the old one. The Andradas had returned from exile, and most of the new members were bitterly prejudiced against Pedro. In the midst of the discontent came the news of the July revolution in Paris, giving the liberal propaganda a tremendous impetus. The assassination of a newspaper man named Badaro in November, 1830,aroused popular indignation to a fearful pitch. Pedro made a last effort to regain his popularity by making a journey through the province of Minas. His cold reception convinced him that the disaffection was not merely local, and he returned to Rio sick at heart. In March, 1831, disturbances broke out in the Rio streets between the radicals and the Portuguese. Vasconcellos and Feijó were absent, but Evaristo drew up a manifesto demanding immediate reparation for the outrages committed by the rioting Portuguese. The Emperor tried to still the rising storm by dismissing his ministry, but the rioting continued and he suddenly again changed front and appointed a ministry of known reactionary principles. The announcement was followed on the 7th of April by the assembling of a mob, among whose members were professional men, public employees, and even soldiers and deputies. Pedro's proclamation was torn from the messengers' hands and trampled under foot beneath the windows of his palace. The troops were all on the popular side. A committee crowded its way into the Emperor's presence, but he would yield nothing to compulsion, saying with dignity: "I will do everything for the people, but nothing by the people." The news of the desertion of the very troops guarding his person he received with equanimity, but the populace showed equal stubbornness. Throughout the night the crowd stuck to their posts, and about two o'clock in the morning he suddenly drew up to a table and, without consulting any one, wrote out an unconditional abdication in favour of his infant son. Theministers of France and Great Britain had remained with him during this night of anxiety, and when the morning came they were reluctant to accept his abdication as final. All the foreign diplomats except the representatives of the United States and Colombia followed him on board the British warship, where he took refuge. They wished to give him their moral support in case a counter-revolution were attempted.
The most potent cause for Pedro's loss of popularity was that he was a Portuguese. He offended the self-love of a jealous people in a hundred ways by favouring his Portuguese friends. Almost as fatal was his treatment of his blameless wife. One mistress after another succeeded to his favours, and he acknowledged and ennobled his illegitimate children. Most of his concubines did not hold him long, but the last, who was said to be of English descent, acquired a complete ascendancy over him. He publicly installed her as his mistress; created her a marchioness; forced the Empress to accept her as a lady-in-waiting and submit to ride in the same carriage with her. The court attended in a body the baptism of her child, and some of his love letters to her are indescribable. They could have been written only by a degenerate. In the fall of 1826 the poor Empress wasenceintewith her seventh child in nine years, and while in this condition Pedro brutally abused her. She never recovered and died in the most fearful agony. Pedro was absent looking after the war in the Plate, but the marchioness had the heartless effrontery to demand admittanceto the sick-room, and Pedro on his return dismissed the ministers who had dared to approve the action of the official who refused to let his mistress gloat over the tortured deathbed of his wife.
Pedro was too boyish, talkative, and familiar to maintain an ascendancy over such a people as the Brazilians. At all hours of the day and night he was to be seen driving furiously about the streets, and he constantly showed himself in the theatres. He liked to drill his troops himself, and frequently beat the soldiers with his own imperial hand. Once he nearly maimed himself striking at a stupid recruit with his sword, and, missing the blow, catching his own foot. On another occasion he almost killed himself and two members of his family by overturning his carriage. He was always ready to explain to any mob at hand his reasons for his official policy, and was too fond of excitement and applause to refrain from making a speech whenever he had a chance. The inmost emotions of his heart were too cheaply exhibited on the Rio streets for the populace to have much respect for them. He was a belated knight-errant with a decided touch of the demagogue.
After Pedro's expulsion the country was left in a very insecure situation. In Rio the Portuguese were as numerous as the native Brazilians. A great part of the population was under arms and radicalism and revolution were in the air; but, for the moment, fear of the Portuguese and of Pedro's restoration enabled cool-headed, conservative leaders to maintain peace. The members of Congress in the city selected a provisional regency. The ministry, whose dismissal had been the occasion of the outbreak against Pedro, returned to power and, so far as Rio was concerned, government proceeded without interruption. Within a few weeks Congress met in regular session, and a permanent regency was elected. Bahia had revolted and expelled the pro-Portuguese military commander even before Pedro's deposition by Rio. When the news of the events of the 7th of April reached Pernambuco and Pará the troops promptly renounced their commanders.
In Congress grave differences of opinion appeared.The Brazilian party quickly divided into two factions—the conservatives, who were faithful to the dynasty and wanted the fewest possible changes, and the radicals. The former had stepped into control ahead of the latter, but they had not the real force of the country behind them. There was a growing demand for a larger measure of self-government by the provinces and for sweeping democratic reforms.
The regency had no real prestige, the military soon became jealous and dissatisfied, and the party in favour of the Emperor's restoration began to assume a formidably menacing attitude. In July Rio seemed on the point of plunging into a bloody and desperate civil war. The Regency called upon Padre Feijó, the great patriot priest and leader of democratic opinion, and gave him absolute power as minister of justice. His firm measures soon suppressed the disorders in Rio, and the national guard which he organised among the better classes of the people held the revolting regiments in check. In the provinces, however, the local authorities often ignored the commands of the governors appointed by the regency; ambitious local leaders plotted to turn the situation to their personal advantage; and the soldiers and disorderly elements were inflammable material ready to their hands.
In nearly every province civil wars broke out. The typical process was for a military officer, a national-guard colonel, or any other person who had acquired local prestige, to issue a pronunciamento and announce the establishment of a liberal government whose scope was only limited by theimagination and knowledge of constitutional law possessed by the writer of the pronunciamento. If the municipal authorities resisted they were expelled, and creatures of the head of the insurrection put in their places. This overturning of legally existing authority would usually be resented by some neighbouring official or some rival of the petty dictator, and a confused conflict would ensue in which the rank and file of neither side would have a very clear conception of what they were fighting about, although the words of "liberty" and "local rights," "constitutionalism" and "union," were overworked in speeches and proclamations. It is not worth while to give the detailed story of these monotonous and tedious uprisings, massacres, encounters, and usurpations, though the operations often rose to the dignity of campaigns and pitched battles. Hardly a province escaped. In Pernambuco in 1831 the soldiery sacked the city and the people avenged themselves by killing three hundred and banishing the rest. Next year another military revolt broke out in the same city, which soon became an insurrection whose nominal purpose was to restore the Emperor, and which lasted four years. Two hundred persons were killed in Pará in 1831 during a single night of street fighting. A bitter little civil war in Maranhão lasted all through the winter of 1831-32, and was only put down by a general sent from Rio. In Ceará the partisans of the Emperor kept the province in a state of anarchy for several months. In Minas Geraes the friends of Pedro obtained possession of the capital, and the patriots had to fight hard to getthe better of them. Though most of these insurrections were suppressed by the people of the state concerned, disrespect for the central government was increasing, and a blind and jealous hatred of the Portuguese and everything foreign grew continuously.
During the four stormy years which succeeded Pedro's expulsion, Congress discussed violently the terms of the constitutional revision which all saw to be inevitable. Though the radical elements predominated, the conservatives and the senate succeeded in bringing about a compromise. A single regent was substituted for the triple system; he was to be elected by universal though indirect suffrage; and, most important of all, each province was given its own assembly with power to levy taxes and conduct most of the affairs of local government. The conservatives managed to preserve the life senate and the nomination of the provincial governors by the central government.
The party in favour of Pedro's restoration had been gaining ground. The Andradas, always in the most extreme opposition when out of power, went over to it, and the conservatives were gravitating in the same direction when Pedro's own death in 1834 put an end to the movement. He died at a happy moment for his fame,—covered with the laurels he had just won by driving out his usurping and absolutist brother, Miguel, and by using that opportunity to endow Portugal with a constitution. By a curious irony of fate, this reckless soldier and descendant of a hundred absolute kings was theinstrument through which constitutional government was given to both branches of the Portuguese race.
The statesman who had proved himself most nearly master of the situation during these stormy years was Padre Feijó. He represented the average Brazilian—the disinterested and honest public. He had energy and intrepidity; his eloquence was peculiar and commanding; his advocacy of his beliefs was uncompromising; he had been a leader in sustaining liberal ideas; and he had proven his practical courage and capacity in putting down the counter-revolution in Rio. He naturally became a candidate for sole regent after the passage of theActo Addicional, or amendment to the constitution. It seemed appropriate that to him should be entrusted the putting into force of the law which was expected to change Brazil into a federation of democracies united under a constitutional monarchy. Elected after a close contest, he took office in the latter part of 1835, sincerely anxious to rule well and sustained by a popular love and confidence such as few Brazilian statesmen have enjoyed. However, from the beginning he was unable to count on the support of a majority of the Chamber. He was not the man to manage by adroit manipulation and skilful distribution of patronage, but his own work and that of Vasconcellos had borne fruit, and the popular branch of the legislature had become the dominating political force in the Brazilian system. The tide was now setting toward conservatism; the heroic impulses that had brought about the revolution of1831 had lost their force; the nation's temper was cooled; the politicians had forgotten their fine enthusiasm and were busily engaged in personal intrigues.
Feijó inherited from the former regency the two most formidable revolutions which so far had broken out—that of Vinagre and Malcher in Pará, and the great rebellion in Rio Grande do Sul. He was hardly fitted to deal with such a complicated situation as that of Brazil in 1836. He himself said: "I am a man to break, never to bend." Though he gave the officeholders of Brazil an object-lesson in unblemished integrity, his actions were often harsh and arbitrary. When on the floor of the Chamber he had been the chief exponent of democracy, but as chief executive he rode roughshod over his inferiors, refused to be guided by others, even in matters where no principle was involved, and proved that he had the true Latin tendency to centralise administration.
Vasconcellos soon outgeneralled Feijó. A dread of innovation was spreading among the landholding classes. The merchants and Portuguese of the cities naturally gravitated away from the radical regent. The opposition majority in the Chamber, compactly organised by Vasconcellos's skilful management, was encouraged, feeling that it was backed by the mercantile and office-holding classes, and by the persons of highest intelligence and best social position. It clung together with a cohesion unusual in South America, and was the foundation upon which the historical parties were built whose names areconstantly encountered in Brazilian political history for the next fifty years.
For two years Feijó struggled against the adverse conditions. For the Pará revolution he found a clever and faithful general in Andrea, and managed to keep him well supplied with money and troops, so that a vigorous pursuit of the guerrilla chiefs resulted in their capture and the pacification of the province. But in Rio Grande the people were too strong and too independent to be reduced by troops sent from without, and Congress hampered him by refusing votes of credit. The revolution which had broken out there three months before he assumed the regency had been occasioned by anti-Portuguese feeling and the unpopularity of the governor. The latter was obliged to flee from Porto Alegre with hardly a semblance of resistance. At first Feijó wisely limited his interference to the nomination of a new governor. It was not safe to irritate the half-feudal chiefs, backed by their bands of gauchos trained in constant raids over the Uruguayan border and who were too accustomed to seeing revolutions on the Spanish side to hesitate much about undertaking one on their own account. But the new governor was ambitious and tried to take advantage of the jealousies among the gaucho leaders to make himself supreme. He got some of the ablest of them on his side, but the others were stimulated into more determined fighting. The rebels kept the field in formidable numbers, and among their able partisan chiefs was Giuseppe Garibaldi, who here took part in his first war forfreedom. At first evil fortune followed the patriots, and they were badly defeated in the battle of Fanfa, where their greatest leader, Bento Gonçalves, was captured and carried to Rio. His lieutenants rallied again and declared Rio Grande an independent republic.
Feijó despatched a new governor, whose oppressive measures soon brought about a wholesale desertion by the Rio Grandenses, who had hitherto supported the union side. By the middle of 1837 Rio Grande seemed hopelessly lost to Brazil, and the government only held the coast towns.
His bad management of affairs in Rio Grande was the immediate occasion of Feijó's resignation (September, 1837). The victorious conservative majority immediately stepped into power. Bernardo de Vasconcellos reaped at length a personal reward for his years of labour and intrigue, and became the ruling force in the Chamber, and Prime Minister, though a wealthy senator, Araujo Lima by name, had been elected regent. But Vasconcellos was merely the first among equals and held his power only so long as he could command the support of the conservative majority. A sort of oligarchy grew up which directed the work of reaction without much more regard for outside opinion than Pedro himself had shown. However, Brazil had finally entered upon a stage of government which in form was parliamentary and in substance was partly so. It was rather the parliamentarism of Walpole than of Gladstone; the members owed their seats to the administration; they were a sort of self-nominating andself-renewing body; and departmental and judicial administration continued in much the same old way.
The great task before the conservative regency was to undo most of the work which had been wrought by the federalist and democratic movement of the early 30's. The amendments to the constitution, known as theActo Addicional, had apparently established the autonomy of the provinces in their local affairs. If these amendments had been put into effect, Brazil would have become a federated state like Switzerland or the United States. The conservatives were alarmed at the length to which the provincial assemblies were already going in managing their own affairs, and succeeded in turning the country back on the road toward centralisation and unification. A law was passed which interpreted theActo Addicionalso as nearly to destroy provincial autonomy. The provincial assemblies were forbidden to interfere with the magistracy; their resolutions could be vetoed by the governors or the national Congress; their power of controlling the administration of justice was taken away. They became little more than advisory bodies completely under the dominance of governors appointed from Rio, and who rarely were citizens of the states they ruled. At first there was little opposition, and the regency easily suppressed a separatist movement in Bahia which proposed to establish a republic until the boy emperor should come of age.
DONNA JANUARIA.DONNA JANUARIA.[From a steel engraving.]
The reorganised regency was, however, weak. The attitude of the nation was merely tolerant and expectant. The war in Rio Grande, continued and the attacks of the Liberals in the Chamber increased in force and effectiveness. Ministers began to change and shift; the conviction grew that the conservative oligarchy would not long rule the country. Liberals and conservatives alike inclined to the idea that the best thing was to return to a ruler selected from the legitimate royal family. According to the constitution the boy emperor would not become of age until he reached eighteen, in 1843. If the constitution were strictly followed the country would have to be governed for years by a hybrid executive—a regent who was neither a ruler by popular choice nor yet a monarch by blood and succession. Many advocated declaring the Emperor's eldest sister, Januaria, regent, though the young lady protested tearfully against being turned into such a thing as she imagined a regent to be. More insisted that the Emperor, in spite of his tender years, immediately assume the functions of supreme ruler.
The politicians in opposition, with the two surviving Andradas at their head, took advantage of this feeling. Bills were introduced in Congress authorising the Emperor to take the reins at once. The regent's ministers did not dare directly oppose these measures; they only tried to compromise as long as possible. But difficulties and dissatisfaction increased; a formidable revolution broke out in Maranhão; the Rio Grandenses invaded Santa Catharina. It was evident that the regency could not continue to hold the clashing provinces together. While the intellectual conviction had never been stronger that union between the provinces was an advantage, circumstances were increasing dissatisfaction and insubordination in every part of the empire.
DOM PEDRO II.DOM PEDRO II.[From a steel engraving.]
The contest in Congress over the Emperor's majority assumed an acute phase as soon as the session of 1840 began. The ministry in desperation sought to prevent immediate action by calling Vasconcellos back to power and proroguing the session. The announcement of this step was followed by an outburst that left no recourse but a submission of the matter in dispute to the boy emperor himself. The opposition deputies went out in a body to see him, and begged him to consent to assume his imperial functions at once. Though entirely unauthorised by the constitution, no one made serious objection to such a revolutionary way of proceeding. The young Pedro accepted with dignity and confidence; the city and country went wild with delight, and on the 23rd of July, 1840, Congress assembled in a sort ofextraordinary constituent assembly and without a dissenting voice proclaimed him of age.
Although the ten years of the regency were the stormiest in Brazilian history, they were in many respects the most fruitful. The nation was serving an apprenticeship in governing itself; its public men were being trained; the value of self-restraint and of peace were being learned. The freedom of the press and of parliament was definitely established. The production of literature began; professional schools were put on a footing not unworthy of any civilised country; learned societies were organised; the study of the resources of the country was continued; social intercourse developed; communication between the provinces increased; the study of foreign languages became general among the polite classes.
Industrially, too, the period was one of germination of those seeds from which subsequently grew the prosperity of the country. Though foreign commerce increased little during the civil wars, the cultivation of coffee assumed large proportions, and while sugar and cotton, food crops and tobacco, suffered much from foreign competition and civil disturbances, nevertheless they held up pretty well. The confusion of the times and the weakness of the central government prevented any great improvement in the public finances, but neither taxes nor debt were piled up as they had been under Pedro I. Though the efficiency and honesty of the administration left much to be desired, the small resources of which the central government disposed brought about an era of comparative economy in the departments.
The so-called Liberals went into power on the declaration of the Emperor's majority, and proved to be more tyrannical and centralising than the Conservatives whom they had replaced. Provincial governors were dismissed wholesale solely for factional advantage. The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved and a new one elected in the fall of 1840, and in the choice of deputies the Andradas interfered, securing an overwhelming Liberal majority.
In reality, however, the Andradas had not won the confidence of the rulingcoteries, nor of the boy emperor. When they quarrelled with Aureliano, one of their colleagues, the matter was submitted to Pedro, who was then only fifteen and a half years old. His decision was against the Andradas. They resigned, and from that moment until his mental powers began to fail Pedro II. was the supreme authority in the State. He governed parliamentarily as far as he deemed it possible, left most matters to his Cabinets, kept out of view, and was careful to ascertain public opinion. None the less he was thefinal arbiter in matters of the first importance. In the politics of the next fifty years he was incomparably the most potent Brazilian.
Happily for his country he resembled his mother rather than his father. Studious and laborious, books were his great occupation. He was an indefatigable and omnivorous reader, and, though especially fond of history and sociology, few subjects and few literatures escaped him. No fact ever failed to interest him, but his mind was too discursive and his studies too widespread and too superficial to give him a store of sound and well-digested knowledge. Morally he was a complete contrast to his dissipated father. He was a monarch of the conscientious nineteenth-century type. He as a little boy had been obedient to the priests and ladies to whom his rearing had been entrusted, but they retained no great influence over him. Though thoroughly respectful toward religion he was not especially devout, and his political ideas were gathered rather from his own reading than from direct teaching. As a father and husband he was good and kind, and conscientiously devoted all his energies to the performance of his duties, public and private. His first act on assuming power was to forbid the people of his household to ask any favours of him in regard to public affairs.
His manners were democratic. Though tall and handsome he cared little for his personal appearance; his clothing was ill-fitting and ill cared for; he drove about in rickety old carriages with absurd-looking horses; he kept no Court properly so called; hewould gobble through his state dinners in a hurry to get back to his books; he would call Cabinet meetings at inconvenient hours of the night if an idea struck him. Though his subjects loved and trusted him, the general tendency was rather to laugh at his peculiarities. It could hardly be said that people personally stood much in awe of him. At the same time, when action was to be taken in a crisis, he could be as arbitrary as any czar. He took no pride in imposing his will over that of others, and his manners and methods were always mild and gentle. Some believe that he deliberately assumed careless, democratic ways, thinking them best adapted to maintaining himself in power, and it is certain that he showed little anxiety about his position and seemed to value it slightly. Intellectually restless though he was, his judgment was sound enough to enable him soon to foresee that the inevitable tendency was toward a republic, and in the latter part of his life he often said that he was the best republican in the empire, and that his main function was to prepare the way for it. At bottom he was not a man of strong passions or intense will, but was rather a mild-mannered and philosophic opportunist whose greatest merit was that he loved peace, and whose greatest achievement was that Brazil remained internally quiet during his long reign.
With the fall of the Andradas the Conservative party returned to power, and a reactionary parliamentary government, with the Emperor as a sort of regulating and controllingdeus ex machina, was definitely installed. Great things were hoped forfrom the new régime, and loyalty to the young Emperor was enthusiastic, sincere, and universal. However, the internal disturbances were too serious to be calmed in a day. The revolution in Maranhão, which had been bequeathed by the Regency, was formidable. In pacifying it a general named Luiz Lima e Silva first came to the front, and was named Baron of Caxias for his services. This officer was less than forty years of age, and came of a family of soldiers, one of whom had been the military member of the first Regency. He had served in all the wars and most of the insurrections since 1822, and had always shown solid though not especially brilliant qualities. He was a good manager of men, and a steady, pertinacious, and shrewd negotiator. His detractors accuse him of unscrupulous bribery, and it is certain that he was extraordinarily successful in sowing discord among his opponents. He obeyed the orders of his superiors and was faithful to the Emperor. Probably the limitations of his character were as important as his affirmative abilities in enabling him to grow into the great military consolidator of the distracted empire. His work in the first years of the forties was hardly inferior in importance to that of the Emperor himself.