Chapter III
Brazil: The Empire—the Republic
The influence of the Imperial régime—A transatlantic Marcus-Aurelius, Dom Pedro II.—The Federal Republic.
While the republics of America have passed, without prudent transition, from colonial dependence to self-government, Brazil, by means of paternal autocracies, was prepared for the ultimate realisation of its republican dreams. There liberty was not the immediate gift of unrealisable constitutions, but the logical end of a painful conquest. Brazil was successively a tributary colony, an independent monarchy, an absolutist empire, and a federal and democratic republic. One principle, that of authority, was dominant throughout this process of evolution. A rigid despotism gradually ceded secular prerogatives before the attacks of an ardent liberalism; progress was definite and order lasting, and revolution has been powerless to shake the principle of monarchical continuity.
Portugal has not yet been invaded by the French armies. The royal family, carrying the monarchical penates, have fled toward their distant colony, the idyllic and tropical Brazil. We are in 1807: Maria, Queen of Portugal, is insane; João de Braganza, the regent, placid and undecided, hopes for a bourgeois ostracism, without political convulsions.
In Brazil, the monarch, guided by conservative spirits, transforms the economic system and decrees the freedom of the ports, and the metropolitan monopoly is thereby abolished. England, watching over the exodus of the king, demands protection for her products. The factories which a policy of lamentable rivalities had closed are reopened. As early as 1808 the king wishes to found an empire in this colony, devoid as it is of political personality; in 1815 he raises it to the category of kingdom, thus laying the foundations of nationality. Independence, after this, will only be the natural segregation of an organism already formed.
The government of the Portuguese king develops all the national forces which were embryonic in the colony—art, law, literature. He founds the Bank of Brazil, establishes a military academy, a national library, and a botanic garden; he fosters agriculture and immigration. His new domain seems to have transformed the mediocre monarch. Under the influence of his queen, Charlotte, eager for power and display, he longs to extend his dominion over Uruguay and Paraguay, perhaps even to reconstitute, to his own profit, the vice-kingdom of La Plata. He seizes upon French Guiana, which remains in the power of Brazil until 1817.
But such vast plans as these do not strengthen the hands of the monarch. The Court, silent and extravagant, does not please the Brazilians, and the King favours the Portuguese merchants by an extreme prodigality. He creates a new nobility, that of the "sons of the King," and its influence in the palace and its insolent display soon weary the colonists. The old régime is still extant; a parasitical bureaucracy, recruited among the Portuguese, weighs heavily on the destinies of Brazil.
A revolution in Portugal in 1820 invites the King to return to Europe to accept the Constitution put forward by the revolutionary junta of Lisbon. The monarch leaves his son, Dom Pedro de Alcantara, in Brazil, and quits the country. It is said that on bidding Dom Pedro farewell he cried: "Before long Brazil will separate from Portugal; if it is so, crown yourself before some adventurer gets hold of the sceptre."
The Lisbon Parliament wished to destroy the reforms of João VI. in Brazil, and to transform a monarchical nation into a feudal colony, but the Brazilian deputies then in Portugal protested and emigrated to England. A revolution at Pernambuco in 1817 had raised the standard of nationalism. The manifesto or Preciso of the revolutionaries formulated the complaints of the colony. "There is no longer any distinction," said the victorious patriots, "between Brazilians and Europeans; all consider themselves brothers; as descendants of the same origin, as inhabitants of the same country, as believers of the same religion."
Journalism, in its infancy, was propagating constitutional ideas both in the north and in the south. Jacobin declamation and romantic ideology created a powerful movement in the taciturn colony. Governmental juntas were appointed in the provinces. Portuguese and Brazilians struggled for political and social domination, but a Lusitanian army, in spite of popular protest, imposed the oath of fidelity to the Constitution which had been promulgated for the metropolis by the distant Cortes.
The prince prevented a federal disaggregation and founded the unity of Brazil. He united the representatives of the rebellious provinces, convoked, in 1822, a Constituent Assembly, visited the country districts, and became the "perpetual defender of Brazil." Like the Gothic kings at the time of the Moorish invasion, or the French princes who were faced with feudal anarchy, he founded a national dynasty, and bound the unity and independence of Brazil with the destinies of the monarchy. Dom João VI. had raised Brazil to the rank of a kingdom; Pedro I. rendered it independent of Portugal. "Independence or death!" he cried, in his triumphant Odyssey across the rebellious provinces. At Ipiranga floated the new flag, gold and green, of the new-born Empire. Pedro I. was crowned Constitutional Emperor in December, 1822.
José Bonifacio Andrade e Silva, naturalist, philosopher, and soldier, an encyclopædist according to the French tradition, was the minister of this national transformation; he condemned the revolution, having previously supported natural rights and excessive liberties. He suppressed the journals, and the monarch dissolved the Constituent Assembly, whose violence and lyrical propensities were not a help to the political action of a conservative minister.
Extreme groups were formed which the Emperor endeavoured to conciliate: reactionaries who wanted an absolute government, idealists who wished for a republic, moderates, and conciliatory monarchists who sought a gradual progress under a stable government. Weary of revolutions the Emperor inaugurated a despotic régime; he withdrew from the Assembly, exiled the rebels, among others Andrade, now radical but formerly a reactionary, and always greedy for power. He surrounded himself with Portuguese troops, and the new nobility, the filhos do reinho, and the press attacked him in the name of nationalism. It demanded the persecution of favourites, as in the Spanish colonies the expulsion of the old ruling classes was decreed.
The Emperor once again united the moderate parties, and demanded a Constitution, to which the country swore allegiance in 1824; it was a constitutional charter, an imitation of the liberal European charters. In 1826 he convoked a new National Assembly. Revolutions were still disturbing the country; some provinces wished to secede from the new kingdom; Pernambuco was always the centre of liberalism. An old patriot, Paez de Andrade, hoped to unite the Northern States of Brazil in the "Confederation of the Equator." The monarch sent troops to the north to intimidate the country, and the Lower Chamber condemned this act of despotism; a radical priest, Diego Antonio Feijó, led the radical opposition. He was a revolutionary in Parliament, demanding a responsible government, and condemning the ministers who forced peace upon the provinces by means of foreign legions, German and Irish mercenaries.
The Chambers were invaded by republicans and federals, and Pedro I. by no means abandoned his reactionary ministers. These latter succeeded one another in a series of perpetual crises. The external warfare complicated the political situation; Uruguay had revolted, counting on the aid of Argentine regiments. The Brazilians were defeated, and recognised the independence of Uruguay by the treaty of 1828.
King João died in 1826, and the Emperor remained undecided between the traditional kingdom and the new Empire. He formed a liberal Cabinet to satisfy radicals and federalists, who had triumphed at the elections of 1830. A useless transaction: ministries fell, and the financial muddle increased. The people of Rio de Janeiro revolted, and the Emperor abdicated. José Bonifacio, creator of the political régime, was to be the tutor of the infant prince.
The Regency was a moderate government which steered clear of reactionaries and exaltés both, of absolutism and republicanism. Father Feijó, minister of the Regency, became, like many radicals, a conservative; he organised the National Guard, suppressed military meetings and enforced peace in the interior. Subversive movements continued, and the invulnerable minister repressed them. The administration of the country progressed, schools were founded, the Assembly issued wise codes of laws. The Regent, Andrade, imprisoned and deposed, Diego Feijó was elected tutor of the prince in 1835; the old radical politician was now dictator. He represented the moderates as against the revolutionists; in extreme cases he abandoned liberalism for autocracy. As early as 1836 his political autocracy began to decline and the liberal campaign gathered force. Feijó passed over the regency to his friend, Aranjo Lima, and left the Government. This representative of authority in a country which was a prey to anarchy was autocratic by virtue of his patriotism; like all American dictators he stifled revolution in its blood.
The liberals of yesterday are often the moderates or conservatives of to-day in monarchical Brazil. Andrade, Feijó, and Pereira de Vasconcellos are examples of this inevitable transformation. Liberty was the creed of these politicians when they were oppressed by colonial absolutism, by the servitude anterior to the monarchy and the Empire; they realised their creed, and the reign of liberal principles resulted in disorder. The excess of authority or the excess of anarchy stood in the way of peace and progress. The political leaders of Brazil swayed from side to side; they were liberals against despotism and autocrats against demagogy.
In 1840 the infant prince attained his majority; the liberals, powerful in Parliament, demanded that the Regency should be terminated. The country longed for internal peace, but discord between the parties continued. Numerous revolutions disturbed the country. Minas and Pernambuco, where sedition had passed into a chronic condition, rose in 1842 and 1848 respectively.
Pedro II. governed with the liberals, but the dangers of excessive liberalism, of premature democracy, forced him toward autocracy. He was a learned and sceptical Marcus Aurelius, a stoic who had read Voltaire. "A simple and modest democrat, losing nothing of his personal distinction," wrote the historian Ribeiro, "generous and disinterested, an example of all the domestic virtues, he courted the respectful sympathy of the crowd rather than popularity."[1] He was the first republican of Brazil; he presided over a nation in process of transformation. Before the clash of races, the revolutionary unrest, and Utopian radicalism his Government maintained the traditions, reacted against violent reforms, and favoured the gradual formation of a new world.
In 1841 he confided the ministry to the Marquis de Paranagua, who exiled the revolutionaries, reinforced the political unity of the country, and re-established the Council of State. New ministries continued the conservative reaction. Without freeing the slaves, Brazil prohibited the traffic in this black merchandise, at the suggestion of England. The Empire, faithful to its traditions, intervened in the affairs of La Plata.
The Viscount de Itaborahy, once the external conflict was at an end, presided over an administrative ministry. Immigrants were attracted, and founded German colonies in the south; the navigation of the interior was protected, and the higher regions of the Sertaõ were conquered. A new commercial code, an administrative organisation, agrarian laws, and the reform of the treasury: such were the various forms of the Imperial activity. Itaborahy was followed by an authoritative minister, the Marquis de Parana, a political figure of lasting national significance.
A great administrator, he organised public education, and extended the railways and the navigation of the rivers of the interior. He was assisted in his labours by distinguished statesmen: a jurist, Nabuco de Araujo, and a diplomatist, Baron de Rio Branco. His activities were not merely administrative, but political and social as well. He wished to reconcile the parties; he absorbed the liberal element in the conservative group, and by this fusion of the old parties prepared the way for the appearance of new groups, dominated by a definite intention of liberation or conservation. The reactionary cabinets and the philosopher-Emperor had founded order in the place of revolutionary dispersion. But this order, the victory of narrow traditionalism, could not be lasting. Multiple racial elements—Portuguese, Indian, and African—were seething in the new society; democracy would prove to be the protest of redeemed slaves against a powerful oligarchy. The Marquis de Parana, who, having attracted the liberals, transformed his own conservative group, and consolidated order by reuniting the factions, understood that reaction could not be permanent in an incoherent democracy. He was the last of the conservatives and the first of the liberals.
The reactionary cabinets of Caxias, Olinda, and Ferraz followed his, and other parties were formed: authoritative conservatives, uncompromising liberals, and a party of conciliation. The elections of 1860 were a democratic triumph. Great orators came to the fore with a truly tropical eloquence; these "new men," like Antonio Leocadio Guzman in Venezuela, stirred the passions of the people. To oppose their liberal programme conservatives and moderate liberals united in Congress. The reactionaries governed from 1848 to 1862; now the radicals sought for power. The last conservative cabinets fell to pieces before the opposition of Parliament and the protests of the crowd. Despotic monarchy was condemned; constitutional monarchy had many supporters; new elections, in 1863, increased the strength of the liberals and democrats. The Paraguayan war against the dictatorship of Lopez gave unusual prominence to the external life of the country, and political agitation died down.
Pedro II., representing the conservative interests of historical and national continuity, was opposed to an unruly liberalism. After one liberal ministry he chose two moderate cabinets, under Olinda and Vasconcellos, which were inclined to conservatism, and finally Itaborahy dissolved the Lower Chamber. The Emperor had gone back ten years; the ministry that in 1852 had marked the triumph of the conservatives was now to rule in the face of a rising tide of democracy. A constitutional monarch by law, he was none the less an autocrat, for he forced his ministries upon a hostile Chamber, and gave politics a direction contrary to the will of the people, and those their suffrage had newly elected.
The liberals rose against the reactionary Emperor and demanded reform or revolution. A transformation of the electoral system, of the Draconian code of justice, and of the army, which was really a Prætorian legion supporting an absolute power, and, in the social department, the liberation of the slaves: such was the programme of 1869. A dissident group of conservatives united with the liberals, and a patrician, Nabuco de Araujo, signed the manifesto of the reformers.
It was the crisis of the monarchy. Its historical function was nearly at an end; it had organised peace, created unity and nationality, and laid the orderly foundations of the new Brazilian race. Autocracy, necessary in the dawn of the century, was now contrary to democratic development; after 1870 the liberals openly aspired to found a republic.
The ministry of Viscount Rio Branco, from 1871 to 1876, maintained the status quo. A great administrator, like the Marquis de Parana, he effected a reform in public education by founding special schools; he took a census of the country, and extended the network of railways. Immigration increased under his government and exchange was bettered. A great social reform changed the face of the Empire; in 1871 slavery was abolished. The separated classes were about to mingle with the nation; the result was the rise of a mestizo democracy. Slavery abolished, castes confounded, liberals discontented, the reactionaries growing old—on the doubtful horizon one supreme hope was visible: the republic. It was now the collective ideal, as the Empire had been in the last days of the colonial period. It was proclaimed, without violence, in 1889.
The Emperor, who abdicated, a symbol of the majestic past, had prepared the advent of the Republic that ostracised him. His ideas were liberal; he was the protector of the sciences; a smiling philosopher; and in fostering the intellectual transformation of Brazil he exposed his own autocracy to the criticism of the liberals. By abolishing slavery he weakened the power of the reigning oligarchy; by destroying privileges and uniting hostile classes he created a democracy.
The Empire, in America, represents tutelary authority. Between the feudal colony and the Republic—two extreme points of political development—arose the Brazilian monarchy, as a moderative power. It brought a necessary equilibrium, and, with that, progress. First of all it established autonomy; then a national order, a national dynasty; it preserved traditions, and organised the forces of society. Beside it arose a conservative oligarchy, bound to the soil; castes and permanent interests were created. The territorial overlords upheld the stability of the Empire, and an admirable political system imposed peace upon a heterogeneous people, shaken by the clash of races and the opposition of seaboard and province. Between 1848 and 1862 the monarchy created the Brazilian nation.
In the South American republics anarchy destroys national unity and prevents the crystallisation of the social classes. In Brazil there were frequent revolutions under the Regency; military leaders were eager for power, but there was a permanent and inviolable bulwark against disorder. The Emperor was the caudillo of caudillos, the leader of leaders; the Constitution partially justified his despotism. Without violating it, he imposed, by means of conservative ministries, lasting peace and gradual reforms. Against this inflexible Cæsar struggled a seething democracy; it snatched certain privileges and won limited liberties, and eventually saw the birth of the Republic, the appointed term of political and social evolution. The rigour of the principle of authority has spared Brazil the perpetual revolutionary crises endured by other American nations.
[1] Work already cited, p. 516.