BARON OF CAXIAS.BARON OF CAXIAS.[From an old woodcut.]
The return to power of the Conservatives in 1841 caused great dissatisfaction among the displaced Liberals and the advocates of provincial autonomy. The Conservatives seemed to have captured the young emperor, and the Liberals began to insist on the application to Brazil of the English maxim, "The king reigns but does not govern." In 1842 a revolution broke out in Sorocaba, the home of Padre Feijó, in the state of São Paulo. The trouble was aggravated by the harsh measures taken by the Conservative governor to suppress it, and soon spread to various points in the province and thence to Minas Geraes. The revolutionists announced that their objects were to free the Emperor from the coercion of the Conservative oligarchy; to maintain the autonomy of the provinces; and to preserve the constitution, whose guarantees were being rendered nugatory. Fighting only lasted two months, but there were fifteen important fights in Minas and five in São Paulo. The government forces under Caxias were completely victorious, and in the final and decisive battle of Santa Luzia he overwhelmed anddispersed three thousand men and captured all the principal leaders. The Emperor and Caxias adopted a magnanimous and conciliatory policy toward the defeated rebels, though the Conservative ministers persisted in advocating harsh measures.
Only Rio Grande do Sul remained under arms, and even there the rebels were not averse to accepting the Emperor's authority. As soon as Caxias had finished the pacification of Minas, he was ordered south. The campaign began by his winning two important victories, and he followed them up by promises of amnesty which detached some of the most formidable rebel chiefs. Finally, in the spring of 1845, Rio Grande returned to the Brazilian union on the concession of a full and complete amnesty. That province has ever since enjoyed a larger measure of autonomy than any other part of Brazil.
By the beginning of 1844 the disintegrating effects of a long continuance in power showed itself among the Conservatives. The Cabinet came to an issue with the Emperor over a question of an appointment, and he called the Liberals to power. The new government was ready to carry out the Emperor's policy of full and free amnesty and pacification by concession. With the collapse of the revolution in Rio Grande the central government seemed at length to have passed all danger. The demands for a juster interpretation of theActo Addicionaland for a larger measure of autonomy to the provinces and municipalities died out altogether, or took a peaceful form. The Liberals in power turned out to be as conservative as the Conservatives themselves, and the work of consolidation and centralisation proceeded uninterruptedly.
The Liberal ministry, was, however, in a false situation. The very name they bore was an implied promise to effect reforms. Their majority soon split up into warring factions. Congress spent the session of 1848 in quarrelsome debates; the fall of Louis Philippe had diffused a spirit of revolution in the air; the municipal elections were accompanied by riots, and the ministry itself deliberately encouraged a renewal of the anti-Portuguese agitation. The Emperor thought himself obliged to intervene, and appointed a Conservative Cabinet. In Pernambuco the new Conservative governor displaced the Liberal officials who had been holding office for the last three years. The latter were anti-Rio and anti-Portuguese, and they and their partisans started an insurrection known as that of thepraieiros. It quickly assumed a formidable character and as many as two thousand revolutionists took part in a single battle, but after three months of fighting they were completely defeated. Little difficulty was experienced in restoring public order. The movement had been rather a partisan uprising than a general popular revolution.
This was the last attempt for more than forty years to establish a federal system. The necessities of the stormy period from 1827 to 1848 had led, step by step, to a form of government which was centralised and yet not absolute. The imperial system had been the result of a natural growth. When the fabric reached stability the professional ruling classesfeared to disturb it, and the people were too inert and indifferent to afford support to agitators and reformers.
PRINCESS ISABEL IN 1889.PRINCESS ISABEL IN 1889.
Agriculture, commerce, and industry advanced only slowly during the first eight years of Pedro's rule. The country was getting ready for the activity which followed. Great Britain's efforts to induce the Brazilian government to carry out its treaty obligations for the suppression of the slave-trade had been futile. In 1845 the British Parliament passed the Aberdeen Bill, which authorised Britishmen-of-war to capture slavers even in territorial waters. This measure was especially directed at Brazil, whose coast had become practically the sole market for the horrible traffic. The bill did not immediately effect its purpose, and the slavers made the most of the opportunity. In 1848 over sixty thousand negroes were imported into Brazil. Immigration from Europe had practically ceased with the expulsion of Pedro I. and the anti-foreign demonstrations of the Regency, but it now slowly began again. In 1843 Dom Pedro, being then not quite eighteen years old, was married by proxy to Theresina Christina, daughter of Francis, King of Naples. There is a tradition that the Emperor turned his back when he saw his bride's face. Nevertheless, he made her a good husband. Their two boys died in infancy, but in 1846 Isabel was born, who still survives and lives in Paris with her husband, a grandson of Louis Philippe, and with her three sons, the eldest of whom is named for his grandfather and was twenty-seven years old in 1902.
After the final pacification of the country prosperity came with a rush. In the six years from 1849 to 1856 foreign commerce more than doubled. The circulating medium was brought to a sound basis. Coffee had doubled in value by 1850, and its culture was rapidly extended. The profits of sugar-raising had not risen in the same proportion, and Rio, São Paulo, and Minas drew slaves from the northern provinces. The decline of mining in the late years of the eighteenth century and the profitableness of sugar and tobacco during the great wars had made Maranhão, Pernambuco, and Bahia overshadow the South for a time, but now the tide turned the other way. Brazil's drift has ever since been to the South.
The Emperor and government followed an enlightened and vigorous progressive commercial policy. The subjects of internal communication, of colonisation, of better steamship facilities, of the opening of public lands to settlement, of public instruction, of liberal treatment to foreigners, and of administrative and financial reforms were taken up intelligently. So far as the government was concerned the suspicious and jealous exclusive policy was abandoned, and large amounts of foreign capital began to be invested in commercial houses, preparing the way for the great government loans and railroad building soon to come. The British had the lion's share of the importing and the Americans of the carrying trade.
The history of Brazil for the next few decades contains examples of devotion, of high-mindedness, and of great capacities worthily employed, of which any country might well be proud. The higher officials as a rule left office poorer than they had entered it. However, in the lower ranks of the magistracy and the government departments there was much to be desired. The public service became more and more the one career sought by young men of ability. The mercantile and property-owning classes in general kept out of politics. Only the landowning and slaveholding aristocracy owed a nominal allegiance to the two parties whose active members were the officeholders or those who hoped to become officeholders. The most promising and prominent young men were selected from the graduates of the universities, placed in the magistracy, thence to be promoted to the Chamber of Deputies, and to be governors of provinces. The final goal was a nomination to the senate, where, from the dignified security of a life position, the successful Brazilian politician watched the struggles of those below him.
PAMPAS OF THE RIO GRANDE.PAMPAS OF THE RIO GRANDE.
The bright young magistrates were preoccupied with their own ambitions and were not responsible to the people of the localities they happened to be governing for the moment. Real local interests were not studied. Those who reached the highest positions applied their well-trained minds to larger problems, but their work was too much from above down—they produced admirable reports and framed admirable laws, but among the lazy magistracy and indifferent people the energy to put them into effect was too often wanting. But the level of political well-being rose noticeably, though fitfully. The Brazil of 1850 had progressed far beyond the Brazil of colonial times. Liberty of speech was unquestioned and unquestionable; arbitrary imprisonmenthad died out; the grosser forms of tyranny had vanished; property rights and the administration of civil justice had much improved. Judges no longer openly received presents from litigants, though the nation had not risen to the conception of a judiciary independent of the executive.
In 1850 the Emperor chose a new Conservative Cabinet, which proved the most efficient the country had known. Its first great act was to abolish the slave trade.
The year 1850 is also memorable as that in which the yellow fever began those terrible ravages on the Brazilian coast which have never since entirely ceased. The first epidemic is said to have been the worst which ever visited Rio. Two hundred persons fell sick daily, and the wealthier classes were especially attacked. Among the victims was the great statesman, Bernardo de Vasconcellos, and many deputies, senators, and diplomatic representatives. Congress adjourned in terror. In the earlier epidemics the citizens of Rio were just as susceptible as foreigners. Later, however, they acquired a relative immunity—an immunity which is not shared by Brazilians who have lived in non-infected districts.
Brazil and Argentina had agreed in 1828 that Uruguay should be an independent and neutral buffer state between them. But the Buenos Aireans never forgot that for geographical and historical reasons Uruguay naturally belonged to them. Rosas, the Argentine dictator, assisted the Oribe faction, which openly advocated entering the confederation, while the Rio Grande Brazilians whoowned much property on the Uruguayan side of the border aided the Rivera faction.
To protect the property interests of its citizens and prevent Rosas from conquering Uruguay the Brazilian government quietly made military preparations and formed an alliance with the Rivera party and with Urquiza, the ruler of the province of Entre Rios, to which the dictator of Paraguay and the president of Bolivia gave a passive adhesion. It amounted to a coalition to forestall Rosas's plan of uniting the whole of the old Viceroyalty and the Plate valley under his rule. Brazil was virtually the instigator of a combination of the weaker Spanish-American states against the strongest one.
Urquiza crossed the Uruguay, and with the aid of the Brazilian troops made short work of Oribe's army, which was besieging Rivera in Montevideo. Rosas responded with a declaration of war and began collecting a formidable army. Urquiza resolved to carry the war to the gates of Buenos Aires. The allies gathered in camp on the left bank of the Paraná, a hundred miles above Rosario, a great army which numbered four thousand Brazilians, eighteen thousand Argentines, mostly from the half-Indian provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes, and a contingent of Uruguayans. A Brazilian fleet under Admiral Grenfell had penetrated up the Paraná and protected their crossing of the great river. On the 17th of December they got safely over the Paraná, and out of the low country of Entre Rios on to the dry pampas of the right bank. Thence they marched down on Buenos Aires, whereRosas was awaiting them. On the 3rd of February, 1852, he gave them battle in the suburbs of that city. He was completely defeated and fled to England.
Brazil found herself in a peculiarly advantageous situation. The war had cost her little in money or men. Buenos Aires might no longer hope to dominate the other Argentine provinces, and seemed likely to offer small resistance to the unified and centralised empire. Uruguay's independence of Buenos Aires, and Brazil's preponderance in Montevideo were assured. The Rio Grandenses flocked over the border, bought large amounts of property, and enjoyed peculiar privileges, while the Uruguayan government accepted subsidies from that of Brazil.
The country's commercial development continued even more rapidly after the war. In 1853 the Bank of Brazil was authorised to issue circulating notes, and the expansion of credit stimulated business. The same year the Conservative ministry, which had so brilliantly governed the nation since 1848, was forced to resign on account of the constant interference by the Emperor. It was replaced by the "Conciliation Cabinet"—whose chief, the Marquis of Paraná, adopted the policy of admitting Liberals to administrative positions. He remained in power until 1858, and his name will always be associated with one of the most prosperous epochs in Brazilian history. The first railway systems were inaugurated; the receipts of the treasury grew fifty per cent.; European immigration amounted to twenty thousand a year; private wealth and luxury increased;and numerous theatres, balls, and social reunions furnished an indication of the rise of the level of culture.
One of Brazil's reasons for entering on the war against Rosas was to open up the navigation of the Paraguay, Paraná, and Uruguay, upon which she depended for access to a large part of her territory. The treaties made at the conclusion of the war assured, against her protest, free navigation to all nations. Brazil has intermittently attempted to confine the navigation of the international rivers of South America to the nations having territory on their banks.
Paraná's "conciliation" policy seems to have suited the Emperor very well, although it tended to hamper the development of two great parties in clearly defined opposition to each other. The elections came more and more under the control of the bureaucracy and were mere ratifications of selections made by the ministers. Congress lost rather than gained in influence, and the whole system became steadily more centripetal.
OLD MARKET IN SÃO PAULO.OLD MARKET IN SÃO PAULO.
From 1849 the country had been having prosperous times, but in 1856 the inevitable commercial crisis came. Prosperity had brought about extravagances in governmental administration; the budgets showed deficits; foreign loans were resorted to; the currency fluctuated violently. Brazil entered upon seven lean years, during which foreign trade remained stationary, the revenues increased only at the cost of heavy impositions, and the public debt grew. With the death of the Marquis of Paraná in 1858 the regular Conservatives returned to power. He had been the dominant figure in politics since the Regency, and his personal prestige and the confidence the Emperor reposed in him had had much to do with holding the government together during the panic. But the new ministry could not make headway against the difficulties. A new currency law was necessary, but the mercantile and speculating classes bitterly opposed the rigid measures proposed by successive Cabinets. Paraná's neutral policy had given the opposition a hold in some of the most important provinces, and the following elections showed a vast increase in the number of Liberals and of dissident Conservatives. Conservative Cabinets succeeded each other rapidly from 1858 to 1862. The opposition to a contraction of the currencygrew in force, and the dissidents and Liberals finally obtained a majority. The Emperor at last called upon the leader of the dissident Conservatives—Zacarias—to form a government. But he was as powerless as his predecessors, and as a last resort the Emperor temporarily gave up the effort to govern after the English system, and selected a Cabinet outside of the Chamber of Deputies.
The elections of 1863 resulted in a complete defeat of the Conservatives, but the victorious Liberals did not need to pass any radical currency legislation. Hard times had disappeared by the operation of natural law. The bank-notes approached par and the budgets nearly balanced. With 1864 the country entered upon a new era of prosperity. The production of coffee had doubled from 1840 to 1851, and then had remained stationary. But with the cessation of the Civil War in the United States an era of high prices was inaugurated which coincided with Brazil's financial rehabilitation, and stimulated planting. Although real activity in the building of railroads did not begin until after the Paraguayan war, four short lines had been started before 1862. The years of peace and order had disaccustomed the people to the thought of violence, and a steady advance had been made toward government by law. The highly educated statesmen placed by the Emperor at the head of affairs understood the most important principles of good government and tried conscientiously to put them in practice. In transportation, banking, posts, and telegraphs, commercial methods, etc., the improvements of moderncivilisation were easily introduced, though in agriculture the indolence of proprietors and the apathetic ignorance of the slaves prevented any rapid advance.
On the whole, Brazil had made greater political and industrial progress when the Paraguayan war broke out than any other South American country, though grave vices remained to hamper her further development. The mass of the people were apathetic and ignorant; slavery tended to discredit industrious habits, at best so difficult to maintain in the tropics; the upper classes showed little interest in or aptitude for commercial matters: commerce, banking, railroads, mining, and engineering prospered only where foreigners personally engaged in them. The people themselves, in spite of the enlightenment of the educated classes, showed little initiative or energy.
Brazilian statesmen might well have been pardoned if, in 1865, they had claimed for their country the hegemony of South America. The result of the war against Rosas had been brilliant; the Argentine had only just emerged from half a century of civil war; Uruguay was almost a Brazilian protectorate; Brazil's internal condition was settled; in concentration of power, as well as in wealth, population, and extent, she was at the head of the continent. With the republics on the west she maintained good relations, while all the time she was firmly pressing her territorial claims on toward the foot of the Andes. She even attempted to control the navigation of the great waterways of South America.
GOVERNOR'S PALACE IN SÃO PAULO.GOVERNOR'S PALACE IN SÃO PAULO.
In 1863, Florés, a defeated chief, returned from Buenos Aires and set up the standard of revolt in Uruguay. Penetrating as far as the Brazilian border he received assistance, and Aguirre, the Montevidean president, protested. At the same time the latter ruler refused to settle certain claims on behalfof Brazilian citizens which the Rio government had been pressing. The Emperor decided to intervene and help Florés, and thereupon sent a man-of-war up the Uruguay River, which blockaded a port and destroyed Uruguayan public property. Aguirre declared war, and Brazil and Florés in alliance besieged and took the principal towns in western Uruguay. The Argentine received satisfactory assurances and remained neutral.
This high-handed adjustment of Uruguayan affairs furnished a pretext to the Paraguayan dictator, Francisco Lopez, to intervene in his turn. Under a line of vigorous dictators who concentrated all the forces of the nation into their own hands, that country had become menacing to the loosely organised Argentine Republic. Lopez even thought he was strong enough to bid defiance to Brazil. The tyrant was, in fact, an impossible neighbour for the two more progressive and civilised powers. For years he had been preparing for war and at the moment was stronger in a military way than either of his bulky neighbours. He hated both Argentines and Brazilians, and his people had been taught to despise the courage of the latter. Though Brazil's intervention in Uruguay was a matter in which he had an interest, a dignified protest would have obtained ample assurances that the latter's independence would be respected, for there is no evidence that the imperial government intended to do anything more than to replace its enemy Aguirre by the friendly Florés. But the arrogant tyrant wanted to draw the world's attention to himself. He appreciated how difficult it would be for Brazil to send an army against him and how much more difficult it would be to maintain one, and he also knew that she was unprepared to undertake a serious war on foreign soil.
Without any declaration of war, in the fall of 1864 he seized a Brazilian steamer which was making its regular trip up the Paraguay River to Matto Grosso. The crew were imprisoned, and only the intervention of the American minister saved the lives of the Brazilian minister and his family. This outrage left Brazil no alternative. Lopez followed up the seizure of the boat by an expedition up the Paraguay River against Matto Grosso, and easily conquered the principal southern settlements in that province.
The geographical position of the Argentine made her attitude of decisive importance to both belligerents. Uruguay and the southern provinces of Brazil were separated from Paraguay by the Argentine provinces of Corrientes and the Missions. Argentina had favoured Florés's pretensions, and Lopez was so obnoxious that the secret sympathies of Buenos Aires were with Brazil. Further than neutrality, Mitre, then president of Argentina, would not go. He declared that no permission would be given either belligerent to cross Argentine territory with troops. Lopez was made desperately angry at this refusal; he thought he could count on the alliance and support of Urquiza, the virtually independent ruler of the province of Entre Rios and Mitre's enemy, and seems to have believed that he might as well finish up with both Argentina and Brazil atone sitting. In March, 1865, he deliberately declared war on the Argentine, and eighteen thousand Paraguayan troops crossed the Paraná and began offensive operations against Corrientes, Uruguay, and Brazil.
Instead of rising against Mitre, Urquiza declared himself against the Paraguayan dictator, and as his province of Entre Rios controlled access to Paraguay by water, Lopez found that the only result of his rash act was to open up the way by which his enemies could most conveniently reach him. On the first of May, 1865, a formal alliance was made between Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Mitre was agreed upon as commander-in-chief; the allies promised not to lay down their arms until Lopez should be overthrown and expelled from Paraguay; and pledges were given to respect Paraguay's independence. Of the three allies Brazil was the only one which could be expected to give its whole force. Florés could only answer for the colorado faction of Uruguay. Argentina did not represent much more than Buenos Aires. Entre Rios was Urquiza's, and the other outside provinces had no great interest in the result. Nevertheless, the alliance was very advantageous to Brazil. It would have been well-nigh impossible to wage a successful war against an enemy shut up in the middle of the continent, and accessible only by a three-months' march across nearly impassable country, or by tedious navigation up a single river running through a third country, and where an army would have to be disembarked direct from ships on theenemy's soil. The adhesion of Argentina made an aggressive war possible, and the event proved how hopeless would have been a campaign by Brazil alone.
The story of the military operations belongs to the history of Paraguay, and only those events which bore a direct relation to internal affairs in Brazil will be mentioned here. The successful naval battle of Riachuelo, on the Paraná, just below the southern end of Paraguayan territory, in June, 1865, aroused great enthusiasm in Brazil. National feeling was hardly cooled by the news which soon followed of a Paraguayan invasion of Rio Grande, and rose again with the defeat of that invasion. Brazil's regular army numbered less than fifteen thousand men before the war, but at the Emperor's call fifty-seven battalions of volunteers were organised in the fall of 1865. A loan of five million pounds was arranged in London, and no expense was spared in fitting out the army and in strengthening the fleet. By the end of the war Brazil had eighty-five ships, not counting transports, of which thirteen were ironclads. The voyage from Rio de Janeiro to Paraguay takes a month, and the transportation of men and material was tedious and extremely expensive. The government resorted to the issue of paper money, and outraged the feelings of the financial world by compelling the Bank of Brazil to give up the reserve it was maintaining for the redemption of its note issues. The premium on gold rose and the currency fluctuated wildly, although general trade continued to boom.
In September, 1865, the Paraguayan army which had invaded Rio Grande was captured in a body, and peace was confidently expected. Lopez, however, decided to fight it out to the bitter end, and it was April, 1866, before the allies could gain a foothold on Paraguayan soil. For the next six months Brazil was sickened with accounts of desperately bloody and indecisive battles, of which the last was an awful repulse before Curupayty. For more than a year thereafter the allies lay motionless in their camps in the south-western corner of Paraguay, while the cholera carried off thousands.
Though his favourite general, Marshal Caxias, was a Conservative, and not on good terms with the Liberal Cabinet, the Emperor insisted that he be sent to take command. Re-enforcements were vigorously recruited from all over the empire, and in July, 1867, the cautious Caxias began a slow advance. The expenses were mounting up to sixty millions a year; the country chafed at the delays, Caxias quarrelled with the ministers. In July, 1868, the Emperor dismissed them on his own responsibility, and, though the Liberals had still a large majority in the Chamber, called in a Conservative Cabinet. On this occasion the Emperor's pressure was not influential enough to change a minority into a majority, and the Chamber preferred dissolution to submission. Meanwhile Caxias had at last begun to win victories. The very month of the fall of the Liberals he took the great fortress of Humaitá, which guarded the passage up the Paraguay, and Lopez retreated to the neighbourhood of his capital accompanied by almost all the surviving Paraguayans. In November Caxias cleverly outflanked him and taking him in the rear compelled him to fight outside of his trenches until hardly any Paraguayans were left. By the beginning of 1869 Lopez was a fugitive, the Brazilians were in possession of Asuncion, and the war was over except for pursuing Lopez and the few starving soldiers who followed him through the woods.
HOSPITAL AND OLD CHURCH AT PORTO ALEGRE.HOSPITAL AND OLD CHURCH AT PORTO ALEGRE.
Elections were held in March, but it was not worth while for the Liberals to make even the show of a contest. The Liberal leaders issued a manifestodeclining to take any part, and, censuring the Emperor for calling the Conservatives to power against the known wishes of the majority of a legally elected Chamber, announced that they would respect the laws and would confine themselves to a non-parliamentary propagation of the doctrines of anti-absolutism, liberalism, and emancipation. From this time dates the systematic propaganda for the republic. The war ended with the Emperor's son-in-law hunting down the Paraguayan bands. In March, 1870, Lopez was caught with the last few hundred men who remained faithful and speared by a common soldier as he tried to escape through the woods.
The war had cost Brazil three hundred million dollars and over fifty thousand lives. She had gained no substantial result except assuring the safety of Matto Grosso and securing the free navigation of the Paraguay. The Emperor did not attempt to use his victory by establishing a hegemony over South America. Rather did the end of the Paraguayan war mark the beginning of a policy of systematic abstention from intermeddling with outside matters. Paraguay and Uruguay were left in full enjoyment of their independence, and the Argentine then began her marvellous industrial progress and political consolidation. The Plate republics reaped the benefits of the war, while Brazil bore its heaviest burdens. Most of the Argentine provinces had taken little part except to furnish provisions and horses at high prices, and the opening up of Paraguay redounded to the benefit of Buenos Aires and Montevideo—not to that of Rio. No spirit of imperialism spread among the Brazilian people, though they are still proud of the record their soldiers and sailors then made. Their bravery in field fighting and the assault of fortified places was proved beyond question, no matter how poorly they may have been commanded, and how deficient their organisation. The history of no war contains more examples of heroic and hopeless charges, or stories of more desperate hand-to-hand fighting. But a successful battle was followed by torpor; Brazilian tenacity was shown in the patience with which defeats were sustained, and in holding on month after month in camp, rotting in the miasmatic swamps, rather than in pursuing advantages obtained in the field.
From 1808 to 1837 the tendency had been in the direction of democracy and decentralisation. Then the tide turned and from 1837 to the Paraguayan war the central government grew stronger and federalism weaker. The power of the Emperor reached its apogee in 1870. The senators had been personally selected by him and he could count on their gratitude and friendship. Deputies were elected indirectly by electors chosen by a suffrage nominally universal, but the elections—primary and secondary—were mere farces, absolutely controlled by the ministry which happened to be in power. The local governors and magistrates, the officers of the national guard, and the police, all dependent on the central government for their positions, formed a machine against which opposition was useless. If intimidation was not sufficient, the baldest frauds were shamelessly resorted to—false polling lists, manufactured returns, and the seating of contestants by the majority in the Chamber or the returning boards. Of this system the Emperor was the realbeneficiary, for the Cabinets held at his pleasure, and if the majority of a Chamber did not sustain a ministry which he desired to keep in power, all he had to do was to order a dissolution. But this hybrid system contained in itself the elements of sure decay. The Emperor was no arbitrary despot and neither wished nor would he have been able to govern in complete defiance of public opinion. On the other hand, the system afforded no sure method of ascertaining public opinion nor of throwing a proper responsibility upon well-organised political parties.
With the close of the Paraguayan war a series of movements began which ended twenty years later with the overthrow of the empire. Brazil's history during those twenty years is an account of the republican propaganda, the abolition movement, the attempt to reform the elections, the religious agitation, the growth of positivist doctrines, the demand for economic independence by the great provinces, and finally the infiltration of liberalism and insubordination into the army. This evolution, however, affected principally the educated classes. The masses of the people were and still remain largely indifferent to the march of public events.
Commerce and industry continued to expand throughout the Paraguayan war. From 1865 to 1872 the annual revenues doubled, and though in 1868 the emissions of paper money had reduced its value one-half, it steadily rose thereafter until in 1873 it again reached par. Just after the war the budget balanced, and the production of coffee roseone-half. But with relief from financial pressure the Conservative ministers became extravagant, and when the great world panic of 1873 came both government and country were badly caught. A foreign loan of five millions sterling made in 1875 was not enough to meet the mounting deficits. In 1878 new issues of paper money were resorted to, and exchange dropped, remaining below par for ten years in spite of a subsequent doubling of coffee production and a great increase in the value of exports. Population, however, which had increased from five to ten millions from 1840 to 1870, in the next twenty years mounted to fifteen millions.
BRIDGE AT MENDANHA.BRIDGE AT MENDANHA.
The suppression of the slave trade by the Aberdeen Act and the Queiroz law made it probable that the institution itself would ultimately disappear. Brazilian character and customs had always stimulated voluntary emancipation, and in Brazil the negro does not reproduce as rapidly as the white. In 1856 the slaves numbered two millions and a half, being nearly forty per cent. of the population, but in 1873 their number had fallen to 1,584,000, or only sixteen per cent. The institution was, however, socially and politically very strong. Slaves furnished nearly all the labour employed in the production of staple exports, and it was believed that emancipation would be followed by agricultural collapse. But the Emperor was too enlightened a Christian and too susceptible to the good opinion of the civilised world not be at heart an abolitionist. However, it was only at the height of his influence that he deemed it wise to force the consideration of abolition on the reluctant nation. Agitation had begun modestly in 1864; in 1866 gradual emancipation was seriously proposed, but the breaking out of the war caused the matter to be adjourned. In 1869 Joaquim Nabuco, father of the present Brazilian minister to Great Britain, succeeded in virtually committing the Liberal party to emancipation. With the return of peace the question was taken up vigorously. The reactionary Conservative Cabinet resigned rather than be an instrument of the Emperor's wishes as to emancipation, and Pimenta Bueno was appointed Prime Minister for the especial purpose of getting a law through Congress declaring all children born thereafter free. This statesmanfailed, but Rio Branco, father of the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, was more successful. After a bitter and prolonged parliamentary struggle, in which Rio Branco used every weapon that his position gave him in gaining and holding doubtful Congressional votes, the law was passed in 1871. Thereafter all children born of slave mothers were free, though they remained bound to service until twenty-one. The proprietors were also required to register all their slaves. Under the influence of these measures the number of slaves decreased with astonishing rapidity—falling from 1,584,000 in 1873 to 743,000 in 1887.
Rio Branco's victory disrupted the Conservative party, and after achieving it he was unable to hold his majority together. The Chamber was dissolved, and though the new one supported him half-heartedly the old line Conservatives had become deeply dissatisfied with the radical tendencies of the government and the Emperor. Public men of all parties awoke to realisation of the inconsistency between the constitution and the Emperor's personal power. Not much was said in the Chamber, but outside the republican propaganda assumed an active form, and the conviction fast crystallised that the empire could not last for many years. A republican press came into existence and a republican party was organised under the leadership of Saldanha Marinho, an able lawyer of Rio. Republican societies were formed in all the centres of population, but there was no thought of armed revolution. There is, indeed, no evidence that the Emperor ever opposed the republican propaganda, though occasionally he detached some of its able members by promotions to office.
CITY OF OURO PRETO.CITY OF OURO PRETO.
In 1873, 1874, and 1875 the question which most absorbed public attention was the imprisonment of the bishops of Pará and Pernambuco by the civil authorities. The lower ranks of the priesthood were uneducated, and real interest in religion had largely been confined to women and the lower classes. With the growth of liberal ideas among the laity the Church awoke to the necessity of a reformation. These two bishops were leaders in this counter-movement, and they selected the Masonic Lodges as a point of attack. In spite of the nominal prohibition of the Church, Free-Masonry had been permitted in Brazil since 1821, and the lodges had become mere social clubs and philanthropic societies. Free-Masons were members of those semi-religious brotherhoods which take charge of local church feasts and constitute the most important link between the lay and spiritual worlds in Brazilian communities. The two militant bishops ordered that the brotherhoods should expel their Masonic members or suffer the penalty of losing their right to use the church edifices. Where these orders were not obeyed interdicts were laid. The progressive element and the magistracy took the side of the Masons, but the bishops were not without their supporters. The government insisted that the obnoxious interdicts be withdrawn: the bishops refused to yield, and were prosecuted in the civil courts and sent to prison. The Princess Isabel was believed to be on the priests' side, and while theexcitement gradually died out and things went on as before, a wider breach than ever had been created between the progressive and conservative classes. Like the slave-owners devout Catholics now felt that they could no longer depend on the imperial system to protect them against the rising tide of radicalism.
The financial difficulties growing out of the great panic drove Rio Branco from power in 1875, and a succession of Conservative Cabinets struggled along until 1878. The question of electoral reform came to the front, for every one was sick of the absurd system in vogue, and the leaders of both the historical parties hoped for great things from a radical change. The Emperor was opposed to giving up the indirect method of voting, but was anxious to try some lesser reforms. On his return from the United States and Europe in 1877 he virtually instructed the Cabinet to put through a bill drawn after his suggestions, but the Prime Minister resigned because the Emperor insisted that the change could not be made by an ordinary statute, but must go through the tedious process of an amendment to the constitution. The Emperor called in a Liberal Cabinet and a new Chamber was elected.
The Liberal ministry continued in power until 1880, and then fell, partly because it had lost its hold with the Liberal majority, and partly because of the riots in Rio over the street-car tax. A law had been passed compelling each passenger to pay a cent in addition to the regular fare. The people refused, burned the cars, cut the harness in pieces, threw theconductors off, and fought the police until the business of the city was brought to a standstill. The Emperor called upon a cool and experienced politician, José Antonio Saraiva. But the latter refused to take office unless he should be allowed to push through the election bill in the form of an ordinary law. Right here the Emperor suffered a great defeat. He thought himself obliged to yield, and the vigorous minister at once secured the passage of a radical law which completely transformed the electoral system. Suffrage was confined to the educated and property-holding classes, but the electors voted directly for deputies, and the country was divided into districts each of which chose a single deputy. The electoral body was now permanent, and each deputy was responsible to a definite constituency. Saraiva resigned the moment his bill was enacted into law, and every precaution was taken to ensure that the election of 1881 should be free from any suspicion of official pressure. The result was a revelation to the small-bore politicians of the old régime. One hundred and fifty thousand voters registered out of an adult male population of about three millions, and ninety-six thousand voted. The new members were divided nearly equally between the two historical parties—the Liberals getting sixty-eight and the Conservatives fifty-four. Two ministers were defeated for re-election and many of the contests were decided by small majorities. In subsequent elections the Saraiva law proved not to be so effective, and since it is not in the Latin nature to be satisfied with gradual improvement, the liberalmovement, of which the electoral law was a symptom, swept on with increasing violence until the beneficent law was uprooted along with the mistaken system on which it had been painfully grafted.
As soon as electoral reform was out of the way abolition became once more the dominant question in Brazilian politics. Though the majority of Liberals were abolitionists and the doctrine was one of the official principles of the party, the various Liberal Cabinets which succeeded each other from 1881 to 1884 managed to dodge the dangerous issue. Finally the Dantas ministry faced it squarely. A bill was introduced prohibiting the sale of slaves, establishing an emancipation fund, and freeing slaves as fast as they reached the age of sixty. A terrific parliamentary battle followed and the project was defeated by only seven votes—forty-eight Liberals and four Conservatives voting for it, and seventeen Liberals and forty-two Conservatives against. The Emperor dissolved the Chamber and the excitement over abolition became national. The abolitionists subsidised newspapers, held public meetings, and marched through the streets in procession carrying pictures representing the torturing of slaves. No means were spared which might aid to rouse the national conscience. The negroes were advised to revolt, and assistance was openly promised to them. The elections of 1884 were violently contested, instead of being free from fraud and protest like those of 1881. Nor did the government so conscientiously abstain from interference. Nevertheless the Chamber elected did not differ materially in its composition from thatwhich had preceded it. Sixty-five of the one hundred and twenty members of the new House were Liberals, but of these fifteen were opposed to abolition. For the first time avowed republican members were elected—three being returned, and two of them came from São Paulo—Prudente Moraes and Campos Salles, the first two Brazilians to hold office avowedly as republicans and who reaped their reward by becoming two decades later the first two civil presidents of the republic. No election was ever held in Brazil which was so earnestly contested and which constituted so genuine an expression of the wishes of the people. Nevertheless, on the main question—that of abolition—the result was apparently a drawn battle.
With the meeting of the Chamber in 1885 the agitation broke out afresh. The crowds on the Rio streets hissed anti-emancipation deputies, and there was a bitter fight for the control of the organisation of the Chamber. It was soon evident that the Dantas ministry could not force abolition through, and it resigned. Saraiva was called in and he skilfully arranged a compromise. With the aid of Conservative votes he passed a bill for gradual and compensated emancipation. This done, he resigned. The Liberal party was disorganised and dissatisfied with him, and he did not deem it worth his while to try and hold it together. The quarrelling Liberal majority was aghast when it was announced that a Conservative Cabinet would take the reins of government. The Emperor had begun to show decided symptoms of a failure of his mental powers and wasceasing to be a controlling factor in parliamentary affairs. Saraiva's resignation further exacerbated the Liberal leaders against the imperial system, and at the same time continued to lose ground with the slaveholders.
In the election the Liberals had no chance and largely refrained from voting. The governing classes shrank from the probable consequences of abolition; the temper of the country seemed to have cooled; the election reform of 1881 had not proven in practice to be of much value. Though not so absolute as before, the provincial governors resumed their control of the result, and returns were made according to the wishes of the ministry in power. One hundred and three Conservatives received certificates and only twenty-two Liberals, and most of the latter came from the interior where official pressure could least easily be applied. Not a republican was returned, and the declared abolitionists had almost disappeared, although every one knew that the final blow to slavery could not long be deferred.
The new administration devoted itself to the finances. Since 1871 the deficits had been continuous; one sarcastic statesman said amid applause that "the empire is the deficit." The issue of paper money had been excessive. Better times began in 1886. A loan of six millions sterling was contracted for on favourable terms; from forty per cent. below par the currency rose to par in the succeeding three years; imports and exports increased by leaps and bounds; and the revenue grew seventy-five per cent. in a single year. The production of coffee in SãoPaulo, and of rubber in Pará and Amazonas reached unprecedented figures; foreign immigration was subsidised and a systematic propaganda to secure it undertaken. From thirty thousand it ran up to one hundred thousand a year, and the apprehensions that emancipation would cause a dearth of labour were largely quieted. Government subsidies had kept up the building of railroads during the years when the treasury was most embarrassed, and naturally went on more rapidly when prosperity came. When the Paraguayan war ended there were only 450 miles of railroad in the country. In the decade that followed 1450 were built, while from 1880 to 1889 five hundred miles a year were constructed.
The Conservative Prime Minister, Baron Cotegipe, struggled hard through 1886 and 1887 to save the remnants of slavery, but intelligent and unprejudiced opinion was nearly unanimous for the entire abolition of the disgraceful and barbarous institution. Project after project was presented, each one more radical than the last. The slaves began to flee from the plantations. The army refused to aid the police in capturing them. The poor old Emperor had gone abroad, sick and failing, leaving Isabel as regent. Her advisers, mostly priests and foreigners, told her that the delay was endangering the dynasty. Cotegipe resigned and John Alfredo was made Prime Minister for the especial purpose of passing an emancipation act. When Congress met in May, 1888, the speech from the throne announced that the imperial programme was absolute, immediate,and uncompensated emancipation. The prestige of the Crown was sufficient to hush nearly all opposition. Within eight days the law had passed both Houses and been signed by the princess. The votes against it were hardly numerous enough to be worth counting. Only Cotegipe and a few devoted monarchists stood in their places and read aloud the handwriting on the wall, prophesying the sure and speedy overthrow of a monarchy which had thus cast off its surest and most natural supporters.