PEDRO II.
The so-called Liberals went into power on the declaration of the
Emperor's majority, and proved to be more tyrannical and centralising
than the Conservatives whom they had replaced. Provincial governors were
dismissed wholesale solely for factional advantage. The Chamber of
Deputies was dissolved and a new one elected in the fall of 1840, and in
the choice of deputies the Andradas interfered, securing an overwhelming
Liberal majority.
In reality, however, the Andradas had not won the confidence of the
ruling _coteries_, nor of the boy emperor. When they quarrelled with
Aureliano, one of their colleagues, the matter was submitted to Pedro,
who was then only fifteen and a half years old. His decision was against
the Andradas. They resigned, and from that moment until his mental
powers began to fail Pedro II. was the supreme authority in the State.
He governed parliamentarily as far as he deemed it possible, left most
matters to his Cabinets, kept out of view, and was careful to ascertain
public opinion. None the less he was the final arbiter in matters of
the first importance. In the politics of the next fifty years he was
incomparably the most potent Brazilian.
Happily for his country he resembled his mother rather than his father.
Studious and laborious, books were his great occupation. He was an
indefatigable and omnivorous reader, and, though especially fond of
history and sociology, few subjects and few literatures escaped him. No
fact ever failed to interest him, but his mind was too discursive and
his studies too widespread and too superficial to give him a store of
sound and well-digested knowledge. Morally he was a complete contrast to
his dissipated father. He was a monarch of the conscientious
nineteenth-century type. He as a little boy had been obedient to the
priests and ladies to whom his rearing had been entrusted, but they
retained no great influence over him. Though thoroughly respectful
toward religion he was not especially devout, and his political ideas
were gathered rather from his own reading than from direct teaching. As
a father and husband he was good and kind, and conscientiously devoted
all his energies to the performance of his duties, public and private.
His first act on assuming power was to forbid the people of his
household to ask any favours of him in regard to public affairs.
His manners were democratic. Though tall and handsome he cared little
for his personal appearance; his clothing was ill-fitting and ill cared
for; he drove about in rickety old carriages with absurd-looking horses;
he kept no Court properly so called; he would gobble through his state
dinners in a hurry to get back to his books; he would call Cabinet
meetings at inconvenient hours of the night if an idea struck him.
Though his subjects loved and trusted him, the general tendency was
rather to laugh at his peculiarities. It could hardly be said that
people personally stood much in awe of him. At the same time, when
action was to be taken in a crisis, he could be as arbitrary as any
czar. He took no pride in imposing his will over that of others, and his
manners and methods were always mild and gentle. Some believe that he
deliberately assumed careless, democratic ways, thinking them best
adapted to maintaining himself in power, and it is certain that he
showed little anxiety about his position and seemed to value it
slightly. Intellectually restless though he was, his judgment was sound
enough to enable him soon to foresee that the inevitable tendency was
toward a republic, and in the latter part of his life he often said that
he was the best republican in the empire, and that his main function was
to prepare the way for it. At bottom he was not a man of strong passions
or intense will, but was rather a mild-mannered and philosophic
opportunist whose greatest merit was that he loved peace, and whose
greatest achievement was that Brazil remained internally quiet during
his long reign.
With the fall of the Andradas the Conservative party returned to power,
and a reactionary parliamentary government, with the Emperor as a sort
of regulating and controlling _deus ex machina_, was definitely
installed. Great things were hoped for from the new regime, and loyalty
to the young Emperor was enthusiastic, sincere, and universal. However,
the internal disturbances were too serious to be calmed in a day. The
revolution in Maranhao, which had been bequeathed by the Regency, was
formidable. In pacifying it a general named Luiz Lima e Silva first came
to the front, and was named Baron of Caxias for his services. This
officer was less than forty years of age, and came of a family of
soldiers, one of whom had been the military member of the first Regency.
He had served in all the wars and most of the insurrections since 1822,
and had always shown solid though not especially brilliant qualities. He
was a good manager of men, and a steady, pertinacious, and shrewd
negotiator. His detractors accuse him of unscrupulous bribery, and it is
certain that he was extraordinarily successful in sowing discord among
his opponents. He obeyed the orders of his superiors and was faithful to
the Emperor. Probably the limitations of his character were as important
as his affirmative abilities in enabling him to grow into the great
military consolidator of the distracted empire. His work in the first
years of the forties was hardly inferior in importance to that of the
Emperor himself.
[Illustration: 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 Feijo, in the state
of Sao 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 Sao Paulo. The government
forces under Caxias were completely victorious, and in the final and
decisive battle of Santa Luzia he overwhelmed and dispersed 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 the _Acto Addicional_ and 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 the _praieiros_. 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
classes feared to disturb it, and the people were too inert and
indifferent to afford support to agitators and reformers.
[Illustration: 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 British men-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.