Chapter 4

Rio de Janeiro had enjoyed a greater degree of tranquillity during the eighty years since its foundation than any other settlement, and its trade had increased together with its population; but the southern part of its jurisdiction was little more peaceable than Maranham, and not at all more inclined to listen to the remonstrances of the friends of the Indians. The Paulistas were the most difficult of all to manage; they had been the most active and daring of all that hunted either for slaves or for mines, and they were not willing to participate with others, far less to resign the advantages they had gained by unwearied labour and great sacrifices. Their conduct on the restoration of Portugal had evinced a desire of more than the freedom of a colony, and their neighbours were little less disposed for independence than themselves. Santos, and even Rio, had joined them, and had shewn a disposition to depose the governor appointed by the crown; and nothing but the unimpeachable character and firm conduct of Salvador Correa de Sa e Benevides (1658) prevented him from falling a sacrifice to that disposition. Bahia continued to be the capital of the Brazilian states, and its inhabitants proceeded to beautify it with churches, and convents, and nunneries, while they defied the spirit of Christianity by the importation of African, as well as the kidnapping Indian slaves. Pernambuco was still undergoing the miserable effects of the long and desultory war it had sustained; all the bands of government had been loosed during that disastrous period; law and justice had fallen into disuse; and had there not been a redeeming virtue in the free spirit that lived on in spite of the evils among which it had sprung, its very emancipation from a foreign power might have been regretted. The negroes who had escaped to the Palmares, and whose depredations had been disregarded in comparison with the evils of a foreign government, had become a real source of ill to the Pernambucans. Although they cultivated maize, and mandioc, and plaintains, they wanted every other supply. They therefore robbed the Creoles of their cattle, their sugar, their manufactured goods, and even of their Mulatto daughters and female slaves; till at length the government resolved to free the country of them, and called in the aid of a Paulista regiment for the purpose. Ten thousand of the negroes bearing arms had assembled in their chief city, which was surrounded by wooden walls, leaving the lesser ones uninhabited. But their enemies had the advantage of cannon against them, and of supplies of every kind; yet once the negroes beat off their assailants. But numbers overpowered them, and being weakened by famine, their city was forced, and the inmates seized as slaves. Zombi, however, and the most resolute of his followers, threw themselves from a high rock when they perceived their condition desperate. The Portuguese abused their victory, and murdered the rest.

But there was an evil that affected Brazil generally--the too much and the too little power of the governors. They had too much power, if any appeal lay from them--too little, if they were absolute for the term of their government. They were also virtually free from responsibility; their opportunities, nay, their temptations to extortion were almost irresistible; and, to crown all, the corrupt administration of the laws kept pace with the vices and the irregularity of the government. In vain had the wisest regulations been made, and the most just decrees issued. The judges were in many cases parties concerned; they were so in all cases where Indians and negroes were the objects of their judgment, for they were possessors of both. Their salaries were insufficient, their fees arbitrary. What wonder then if the administration was corrupt!

The cultivation of sugar and cotton had proceeded silently amidst all this confusion. The discovery of the gold and diamond mines assisted the government, both in Brazil and in the mother country, to make a stand in the midst of the eminent peril which threatened, in consequence of the losses sustained in the east, while at home there was a scanty and impoverished population, ruined manufactures, and, above all, a neglect of agriculture, that rendered Portugal dependent on foreigners for corn. Every thing was wanted; there was nothing to return; and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Brazil may be truly said to have saved Portugal, by covering with her precious metals the excessive balance that was against her in every branch of commerce, in every department of government.

Yet, though absolute ruin was averted, the weakness of the crown rendered it impossible to defend its foreign possessions from the attacks of a daring enemy. In 1710, a French squadron, under Duclerc, appeared off Rio de Janeiro, but not daring to pass the forts, sailed on, and after making several attempts to land a force at the different inlets, where he was deterred by the appearance of the militia of the country, succeeded at Guaratiba, between thirty and forty miles from the city, and thence he marched upon it with about one thousand marines. The governor, Francisco Castro de Moraes, made no attempt to stop him until his arrival at the city. There the first check the enemy met was from F. Francisco de Menezes, a Trinitarian friar, who appeared every where, and did what the governor, who remained quietly intrenched in a flat space, where the place of the Rosario now is, between two hills, ought to have done. The French having divided, one party attacked the palace, but the students of the college defended it successfully; and after a short, but desperate struggle, the French were overpowered, and the victory disgraced by the inhuman conduct of the Portuguese. Duclerc and his people were imprisoned and harshly treated. Duclerc himself is said to have been murdered in his bed.

The next year drew on Rio de Janeiro a signal punishment for these proceedings. The famous Duguay Trouin undertook to inflict it; and accordingly, in August, 1711, one year after Duclerc's adventure, he arrived off the coast, and taking advantage of a fog, entered the bay, notwithstanding the fire of the forts.

The Portuguese government had notice of his design, and had sent out stores and ammunition to meet the attack, and had appointed Gasper da Costa commander of the troops. But the sudden appearance of the French actually within the harbour, seems to have palsied the understanding of every person on shore, whose business it should have been to oppose them, and the forts and the city were given up almost without a struggle.

It would, however, have been impossible for the French to maintain themselves in Rio; therefore Duguay Trouin, after refreshing his people, ransomed the city for 600,000 cruzadoes. Bad weather alone prevented him from laying waste the reconcave of Bahia, as he had done Rio: but he had fulfilled the ostensible purpose of his voyage by avenging the treatment of Duclerc and his people, and returned to France early in 1712.

These circumstances had awakened the greatest anxiety on account of Brazil in the cabinet of Lisbon: and at the peace of Utrecht, 1713, every precaution was adopted by the Portuguese ministers to avoid any expression that might seem to admit of a free trade by any power whatever to Brazil, notwithstanding the agreements to that effect actually existing at the time. Disputes without end arose between Portugal and Spain concerning the colonies adjoining to the Rio de la Plata, and it was especially stipulated that no other power, particularly England, should be allowed to form settlements there on account of the facilities such settlements might afford for smuggling the precious metals out of the country. These had now become the first object in Brazil. St. Paul's had been erected into a city, and the district of the mines had been formed into a captaincy: the inhabitants of the coast flocked to the interior, where new towns were daily springing up; all were desirous of a share in that lottery where the prizes were so enormous, that the great preponderance of blanks was overlooked. Great inconvenience must have been felt by the early adventurers to the mines: for so many hands were employed in searching for gold, that few remained to cultivate the soil, and provide the necessaries of life. Yet that insatiable thirst of gold is a stimulus which has led to useful and to honourable things: it is not the love of the metal, but the possession of it gives power, and that is the real object of most men's ambition: it is certainly that of the ambition of all nations, and this object is held legitimate: we account those base or wicked who seek the means; we admire those who attain the end. The philosophic historian and the poet are alike ready to condemn the man who first dug the ore from the mine: the panegyric in prose and in verse is lavished on the hero and the patron. But gold furnished the means for the hero's conquests and the patron's liberality, and gold, or the worth of gold, is the object of both; whether in the form of continued power, or of that fame which patronage can bring. Sad indeed has been the waste of human life in searching for gold: but have all the mines together consumed more men than the single revolutionary war? And have not the religious contests among Christians, and their persecutions and mutilations and burnings cost many more? I would not justify the gold finders; their actions were horrible, their oppressions atrocious; but let them have justice: the stimulus was great; urged on by it, they performed great things, they braved cold, and hunger, and fatigue, and persecution, and death; they persevered, they opened the way to unknown lands, they laid the foundations for future civilisation in countries which will have reason to bless their discoveries, when the effect of their evil deeds, as well as the memory of the brutal customs of the savages they so unjustly oppressed, shall have passed away.

But I have neither space nor inclination to follow their adventures, and must refer to Mr. Southey's elaborate and excellent account of them. Daniel Defoe alone could have so handled the subject as to make delightful so dull and so sad a tale. I am but a looker on to whom the actions of the present are more interesting than the past, but yet am not insensible to the influence that the elder days have had upon us.

Pernambuco had during the half century which had elapsed since the expulsion of the Dutch had time to recruit. The sugar plantations had reappeared, and the commerce of Recife had become extremely important. The merchants, and especially those from Europe, had settled there, and the town had increased till it became the second of Brazil; while Olinda gradually declined, having few inhabitants besides priests and the representatives of the old families of the province, who might be called its nobility: still Recife was but a village until, in 1710, it solicited and obtained the royal assent to its becoming a town, and having a camera or municipal council to govern its internal affairs. The jealousy of the people of Olinda and the other old Brazilians was violently excited by this concession, which they conceived would raise the plebeian traders and foreigners to an equality with themselves. After several tumultuous meetings on the subject, three of the ten parishes belonging to Olinda were assigned to Recife, and the governor, fearing to set up the pillar which marks a township openly, had it erected in the night. Fresh disturbances ensued, in which some of the magistrates were concerned, and there were not wanting voices to exclaim that the Pernambucans had shown they could shake off the strong chains of the Dutch, and that they could as easily shake off others and govern themselves. The seditious magistrates were arrested and thrown into prison. The soldiers were employed to disarm the people; but they had now advanced too far to be easily reduced. The governor was fired at and dangerously wounded, and proofs were not wanting that the judge and the bishop had at least consented to the attempt on his life. The most serious disturbances followed: the inhabitants of the whole district took up arms, some blood was shed in the course of their contentions with the soldiers, and Sebastian de Castro, the governor, weakened both in body and mind, was induced to fly to Bahia for safety. Six of the chief Pernambucans were now appointed to exercise the functions of a provisional government till orders should be received from Lisbon, and all Europeans were deprived of their offices and commissions.

But the bishop, who had been at Paraiba since the time when De Castro was wounded, now returned to claim his office as governor on the removal of the former one. He began to exercise his authority in the king's name, and his first act was to declare a general pardon. But he, however appears to have been a timid man: willing yet not daring to join the party who wished to shake off the yoke of Portugal, and by his vacillating conduct betraying both his friends in that party, and the trust reposed in him by the crown. At length, in 1711, these disturbances were quieted by a new governor, Felix Jose Machado de Mendonça. Brazil was not yet ripe for independence; nor indeed could so small and ill-peopled a state as Pernambuco have maintained its freedom even for a year unconnected with the other captaincies. While these things were going on in the captaincies of Brazil, the Jesuits were labouring in the interior to reclaim the Indians, with success far beyond the apparent means, and some towns, which have since become of importance, were built on the coast and on the shores of the Plata, particularly Monte Video, in 1733; but the border war, between the Spaniards and Portuguese, which was waged on account of these settlements, disquieted the neighbourhood for a time. Its importance, however, was soon forgotten in the disturbances caused by the treaty of division between Spain and Portugal, which forcing the Indians who had been reclaimed to emigrate, roused them to a vigorous but short and useless resistance, which only began the evils that the Jesuit missions were destined to perish under.

The Portuguese government, under the administration of Carvalho, afterwards Marquis of Pombal, had begun to attend to, and attempt to reform the abuses which existed throughout Brazil, but particularly in the newly founded captaincies and settlements, when the war with France and Spain broke out in 1762. For a time defence against a foreign enemy superseded every other consideration. The first act of hostility in the western world was the seizing of the Portuguese settlement of Columbia, in the Plata, by the governor of Buenos Ayres, before the squadron despatched by the governor of Brazil, Gomez Freyre, could arrive to protect it. That squadron consisted of the Lord Clive, of 64 guns, an English ship commanded by Capt. Macnamara; the Ambuscade, of 40 guns, in which Penrose, the poet, served as lieutenant; and the Gloria, of 38 guns. The Spanish ships retired before Macnamara, and he ran under the guns of the forts of Colonia, in order to retake the place. He had nearly succeeded in silencing the batteries, when, by accident or negligence, the ship took fire; the enemy renewed their fire; three-fourths of the crew of the Lord Clive, among which was the captain, were drowned. The other ships were nearly destroyed and obliged to retreat; but owing to the neglect of the Spaniards, they were able to refit and return to Rio. And this was the most remarkable action of the war beyond the Atlantic, and the first in which the English distinguished themselves in the defence of Brazil.

Pombal, meantime, having resolved on the suppression of the order of Jesuits, overlooked, in the ardour with which he pursued that measure, the important services they had rendered, and were daily rendering, to one of his favourite objects, namely, the improvement of the condition of the Indians. Their plan of discipline, indeed, hitherto had kept their pupils rather in a state of childish innocence than of manly improvement. Their fault was, that in order to secure obedience, they had stopped short of what they might have effected. Their dominion was an Utopia; and had it been possible to shut out every European and every wild Indian, it might have lasted. But such artificial polities can never be of long duration. Some convulsions either from without or from within must end them, and that with a more complete ruin than could befal states less curiously framed. But the well-intentioned labours of the missionaries had produced one decided good effect,--the habits of savage life were abandoned, and the advantages of agriculture and manufactures had been felt. The rock on which the education of the Indians split, was the community of goods. When a man has no property, but depends for the supply of his daily wants upon the providence of others, he has no incitement to particular exertion. The stimulus to industry cannot exist where a man has no hope of growing richer, no fear of becoming poorer, no anxiety about the provision of his family. His judgment in the portioning and disposing of his property is never called forth; all the qualities and virtues that arise out of the practice of domestic economy lie dormant, and the man remains an infant. It would have been easy to remedy this, by allowing the Indians to possess private stock, and to provide for their own families after the first generation. The newly reclaimed did require to be provided for, but the children growing up in the Aldeas might have been intrusted with their own property. They would have become men; and when the removal of their spiritual fathers took place, that wide and deep desolation would not have overwhelmed them, nor would Paraguay have gone back as it has done towards a savage state.

The Jesuits of Brazil were expelled in 1760, in the most cruel and arbitrary manner. Those of the Spanish American colonies eight years later. Whatever might have been their faults, or even their crimes, in other countries, in these their conduct had been exemplary. They had been the protectors of a persecuted race, the advocates of mercy, the founders of civilisation; and their patience under their unmerited sufferings forms not the least honourable trait in their character.

The history of Brazil, for the next thirty years, is composed of the mismanagement and decay of the Jesuit establishments; the enlargement of the mining districts, particularly in the direction of Mato Grosso; some disputes with the French on the frontier of Cayenne; and the more peaceful occupations of opening roads, and the introduction of new branches of commerce, and the improvement of the old.

This tranquillity was for a moment interrupted by a conspiracy in the province of Minas Geraes, headed by an officer named Joaquim Jose de Silva Xavier, commonly called Tiradentes. The project of the conspirators was to form an independent republic in Minas, and, if possible, to induce Rio de Janeiro to unite with it. But their measures were most inadequate for the end proposed, and their conduct so imprudent, that, although there was a pretty general feeling of discontent on account of the taxes and some other grievances, the conspirators were all seized before they had formed anything like a party capable of resistance, much less of beginning the meditated revolution.

The direct effects upon Brazil of the first thirteen years of the revolutionary war in Europe were confined to some slight disputes regarding the boundaries of the Portuguese and French Guiana, and concerning the limits of which, there was an article in Lord Cornwallis's negotiations with France, or rather the peace of Amiens in 1802.

The indirect effects were greater. Being a good deal left to themselves, the colonists had leisure to discover what sort of cultivation and crops suited best with the climate, and were fittest for the market; and some branches of industry were introduced, and others improved, to the great advantage of the province. Foreign ships, and even fleets, had also begun to resort thither[18]: so that, though the ports had as yet been closed against foreign traders, the entrance of men of war, and such merchant ships as could find no others to refit in, introduced a virtual freedom, which it would afterwards have been impossible not to have confirmed.

[Note 18: That under Sir H. Popham, on Sir D. Baird's expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, for instance, in 1805, and that of the French admiral, Guillaumez, in 1806.]

The court of Portugal meanwhile, as if infatuated by the negotiations of France, consented to buy a disgraceful neutrality at the price of 1,000,000 of livres or 40,000_l._ per month, besides granting free entrance to French woollens into the kingdom.

It was in vain that frequent representations were made to the ministry at Lisbon on the subject; that the armament at Bayonne, and the refusal of Spain to forbid the passage of French troops through her territories, were pointed out. The Portuguese forces were marched to the sea-coast, as if they apprehended an invasion from England; thus leaving the kingdom defenceless on the land side, and the ports were shut against English commerce, by a proclamation, dated 20th October, 1807. But the importance of Portugal to England, as neutral ground, or, in the event of a French government in Spain, as a point whence to attack the great enemy, was such, that the resentment which at another time would certainly have been openly declared, was suppressed; but a strong squadron was always kept up off the coast, partly to watch the proceedings on shore, partly to prevent the Portuguese vessels from coming out of port, and joining the French and Spaniards.