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.
While this system of watchfulness was kept up in Europe, the English
ministry was not less attentive to the designs of France on the South
American colonies. As long as Spain and Portugal continued to pay the
enormous price in money for their neutrality, which France had demanded,
the views of Napoleon were better answered than they could have been by
the possession of all their territory and all their colonies. But the
moment in which they should become unable or unwilling to pay that
price, would of course be that of aggression and invasion. So early as
1796, Mr. Pitt had contemplated the advantages that must arise to
Britain from the possession of a port in South America, and particularly
in the Rio de la Plata, nor did he ever afterwards lose sight of it.
Some circumstances occurred in December, 1804, to draw his attention,
particularly towards the subject, inasmuch as he had intelligence that
France was about to attempt to seize on one of the Spanish settlements
on the first opportunity. But we were then at peace with Spain, and
however willing to prevent such an aggression on the part of France, and
to assist General Miranda in his intended expedition to South America,
it was impossible to co-operate with him, as he earnestly pressed the
ministry to do, although the advantage to England of securing such a
market for her manufactures was clearly perceived. Among the officers
who had been most confidentially consulted by Mr. Pitt, on the
practicability of obtaining a settlement on the La Plata, was Sir Home
Popham; and it was probably his knowledge of the views so long
entertained by that minister, that induced him to take the hazardous
step, of leaving the Cape of Good Hope so soon after it had been
occupied by the English forces, in 1806, and taking Buenos Ayres without
orders to that effect. His immediate motive was, the intelligence he had
procured, that the squadron of the French admiral, Guillaumez, had
intentions of touching on the coast of Brazil, entering the La Plata,
and, if possible, seizing, or forming a settlement there; and some North
Americans whom he had met, encouraged the undertaking, by observing,
that to throw open the ports of South America would be a common benefit
to all commercial nations, but particularly to England.[19]
[Note 19: For the political and commercial views entertained with
regard to the assisting Miranda, or obtaining for England a port in
South America, see Lord Melville's evidence on the court martial on Sir
Home Popham.]
In 1806, the demonstrations of hostilities against Portugal on the part
of France were so evident, that Lord Rosslyn was despatched thither on a
special mission, in which Lord St. Vincent and General Simcoe were
joined with him. His instructions from Mr. Fox, then prime minister,
were to lay before the ministry of Lisbon, the imminent danger which
threatened the country, and to offer assistance in men, money, and
stores from England, to put Portugal in a state of defence, in case the
government should decide on a vigorous and effective resistance. If, on
the other hand, Portugal should think itself too weak to contend with
France, the idea that had once occurred to King Don Alfonso of
emigrating to Brazil, and there establishing the capital of the empire,
was to be revived, and promises made of assistance and protection for
that purpose. If, however, Portugal insisted on rejecting assistance in
either case, the troops under General Simcoe were to be landed, the
strong forts on the Tagus occupied by them, and the fleet was to enter
the river and secure the Portuguese ships and vessels, taking care to
impress the government and people with the feeling that this was done
from regard to the nation, and by no means for the sake of selfish
aggrandisement on the part of England. It appears, however, that the
French preparations for the invasion were not at that time so far
advanced as had been imagined, and at the earnest entreaty of the court
of Lisbon, the troops and the fleet were withdrawn from the Tagus.
On the 8th of August, the next year, however, (1807) Mr. Rayneval, the
French chargé d'affaires at Lisbon, received orders from his court to
declare to the Prince Regent of Portugal, that if by the first of
September he did not declare war against England, and send back the
English minister, recalling the Portuguese ambassador from London, and
did not seize all the English residents, confiscate their property, and
shut the ports of the kingdom against the English; and lastly, if he did
not, without delay, unite his armies and fleets with those of the rest
of the continent against England, he had orders to demand his passports
and to declare war.
The Conde de Barca, then prime minister, was certainly aware of the
preparations of the French government. But with that obstinate blindness
which sometimes seems to possess men like a fate, he persisted in
regarding them only as measures to intimidate and harass England. This
nobleman had been ambassador at the court of St. Petersburg, and on his
recall to take the first place in the cabinet at Lisbon, he was ordered
to go by sea to London, and thence to Portugal, but he chose to perform
the journey by way of Paris, where he saw and conversed both with
Napoleon and Talleyrand. There cannot be the least doubt but that he was
duped by those able men. Many considered him as a traitor. But the
vanity of the Conde, who always said he had gone to judge of these men
by his own eyes, though it makes him weaker, makes him less wicked, and
was, perhaps, the true spring of his actions. He it was who carried the
measures for the detention of the English, the confiscation of their
property, and the shutting the ports against English commerce: adopting,
in short, the whole of the continental system. The very day before Junot
was to reach Lisbon, however, a Paris newspaper, written in anticipation
of the event, announced that "_The House of Braganza no longer
reigned_," and that its members were reduced to the common herd of
ex-princes, &c., giving no very favourable description of them, and
holding out no very flattering expectations for the future. This
completely opened the Prince Regent's eyes, and he consented to that
step, which D. John IV. and Don José had contemplated, namely, the
transferring the seat of his empire to his Transatlantic possessions.
This was in the month of November, 1807, but the events of that month,
the most interesting that had occurred to Portugal since the revolution
that had placed Braganza on the throne of his ancestors, will be best
understood by the following extracts from the despatches received by the
British ministry from Lord Strangford and from Sir Sydney Smith at the
time. On the 29th November, 1807, His Lordship writes, after mentioning
the Prince's departure for Brazil:--