THE REGENCY
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 Para 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 Feijo, 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 the imagination 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 Para in 1831
during a single night of street fighting. A bitter little civil war in
Maranhao lasted all through the winter of 1831-32, and was only put down
by a general sent from Rio. In Ceara 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 get the 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 the instrument 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 Feijo. 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 the _Acto 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 of 1831 had lost
their force; the nation's temper was cooled; the politicians had
forgotten their fine enthusiasm and were busily engaged in personal
intrigues.
Feijo inherited from the former regency the two most formidable
revolutions which so far had broken out--that of Vinagre and Malcher in
Para, 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 Feijo. 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 are constantly
encountered in Brazilian political history for the next fifty years.
For two years Feijo struggled against the adverse conditions. For the
Para 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 Feijo 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 for freedom. At first evil fortune followed the patriots, and they
were badly defeated in the battle of Fanfa, where their greatest leader,
Bento Goncalves, was captured and carried to Rio. His lieutenants
rallied again and declared Rio Grande an independent republic.
Feijo 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 Feijo'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 and
self-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 the _Acto
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 the
_Acto Addicional_ so 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.
[Illustration: 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 Maranhao; 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.
[Illustration: 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 of extraordinary 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.