"Taking into consideration the great services which your excellency has just rendered to the nation," wrote the Emperor on the 25th of November, "and desiring to give your excellency a public testimonial of gratitude for those high and extraordinary services on behalf of the generous Brazilian people, who will ever preserve a lively remembrance of such illustrious acts, I deem it right to confer upon your excellency the title of Marquis of Maranham." The decoration of the Imperial Order of the Cruizeiro was also bestowed upon Lord Cochrane, and on the 19th of December he was made a Privy Councillor of Brazil, the highest honour which it was in the Emperor's power to grant. On the same day he also received from the Emperor a charter confirming his rank and emoluments as First Admiral of Brazil, "seeing how advantageous it would be for the interests of this empire to avail itself of the skill of so valuable an officer," and in recognition of "the valour, intelligence, and activity by which he had distinguished himself in the different services with which he had been entrusted."

CHAPTER XI.

THE NATURE OF THE REWARDS BESTOWED ON LORD COCHRANE FOR HIS FIRST SERVICES TO BRAZIL.—PEDRO I. AND THE PORTUGUESE FACTION.—LORD COCHRANE'S ADVICE TO THE EMPEROR.—THE FRESH TROUBLES BROUGHT UPON HIM BY IT.—THE UNJUST TREATMENT ADOPTED TOWARDS HIM AND THE FLEET.—THE WITHHOLDING OF PRIZE-MONEY AND PAY.—PERSONAL INDIGNITIES TO LORD COCHRANE.—AN AMUSING EPISODE.—LORD COCHRANE'S THREAT OF RESIGNATION, AND ITS EFFECT.—SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH'S ALLUSION TO LORD COCHRANE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

[1823-1824.]

All the rewards bestowed upon Lord Cochrane for his wonderful successes in the northern part of Brazil, except the confirmation of his patent as First Admiral, be it noted, were unsubstantial. He had for ever crushed the power of Portugal in South America; he had added vast provinces to the imperial dominion, and had thus augmented the imperial revenues by considerably more than a million dollars a-year, besides the great and immediate profits of his prize-taking. And all this had been done with a small fleet, poorly equipped and unpaid. The ships entrusted to him had been rendered efficient by his own ingenuity, unaided by the Government, and with scant addition to his resources from the numerous captures made by him. In excess of his instructions, and with nothing but cheap compliments and cheaper promises to encourage him, he had acquired Maranham and Parà, and all the provinces dependent upon them, as well as Bahia. Relying on the honour of his employers, he had pledged his own honour, that on their returning to Rio de Janeiro, his crews, who were clamouring for some part, at any rate, of the wages due to them, should be fully recompensed, and he had the reasonable expectation, that, out of the abundant wealth that he had gained for Brazil, he himself should receive his lawful share of the prize-money gained by his exertions. Instead of that he and his subordinates, both officers and men, were subjected to an unparalleled course of meanness, trickery, and fraud.

This partly resulted from an unfortunate change in the Government that had occurred during his absence. When he left Rio de Janeiro, Pedro I.'s chief secretary of state had been Don José Bonifacio de Andrada y Silva, a wise and patriotic Brazilian. The Emperor and his minister had all along been seriously crippled in fulfilment of their good purposes by subordinates of the Portuguese faction, who persistently twisted their instructions, when they did not act in direct opposition to those instructions, so as to promote their own and their countrymen's selfish and unpatriotic objects; but there had been hope that the zeal of Pedro and José de Andrada would overcome these evil devices, and secure the healthy consolidation of the empire. When Lord Cochrane returned, however, he found that the honest minister had been deposed, that his party had been ousted, and that the Emperor was surrounded by bad counsellors, who, unable to pervert his judgment, were strong enough to restrain its action, and who were robbing him, one by one, of all his constitutional functions, and doing their best to bring Brazil into a state of anarchy, with a view to the re-establishment of Portuguese authority in its old or in some new but no less obnoxious form. The Emperor, desiring to do well, had hardly improved his position, a few days before the Pedro Primiero's arrival, by violently dissolving the Legislative Assembly, banishing some of its members, and threatening to place Rio de Janeiro itself under military law.

That was the state of affairs when Lord Cochrane entered the port. Only five days afterwards, on the 14th of November, 1823, he wrote a bold letter to the Emperor. "My sense of the impropriety of intruding myself on the attention of your Imperial Majesty on any subject unconnected with the official position with which your Majesty has been pleased to honour me," he said, "could only have been overcome by an irresistible desire, under existing circumstances, to contribute to the service of your Majesty, and the empire. The conduct of the late Legislative Assembly, which sought to derogate from the dignity and prerogatives of your Majesty, even presuming to require you to divest yourself of your crown in their presence—which deprived you of your Council of State and denied you a voice in the enactment of laws and the formation of the constitution—and which dared to object to your exercising the only remaining function of royalty, that of rewarding services and conferring honours—could no longer be tolerated; and the justice and wisdom of your Imperial Majesty in dissolving such an assembly will be duly appreciated by discerning men, and by those whose love of good order and their country supersedes their ambition or personal interests. There are, however, individuals who will wickedly take advantage of the late proceedings to kindle the flames of discord, and throw the empire into anarchy and confusion, unless timely prevented by the wisdom and energy of your Imperial Majesty. The declaration that you will give to your people a practical constitution, more free even than that which the late Assembly professed an intention to establish, cannot—considering the spirit which now pervades South America—have the effect of averting impending evils, unless your Imperial Majesty shall be pleased to dissipate all doubts by at once declaring—before the news of the recent events can be dispersed throughout the provinces, and before the discontented members of the late congress can return to their constituents—what is the precise nature of that constitution which your Imperial Majesty intends to bestow. As no monarch is more happy or more truly powerful than the limited monarch of England, surrounded by a free people, enriched by that industry which the security of property by means of just laws never fails to create, permit me humbly and respectfully to suggest, that if your Majesty were to decree that the English constitution, in its most perfect practical form—which, with slight alteration, and chiefly in name, is also the constitution of the United States of North America—shall be the model for the government of Brazil under your Imperial Majesty, with power to the Constituent Assembly to alter particular parts as local circumstances may render advisable, it would excite the sympathy of powerful states abroad, and the firm allegiance of the Brazilian people to your Majesty's throne. Were your Majesty, by a few brief lines in the 'Gazette,' to announce your intention so to do, and were you to banish all distrust from the public mind by removing from your person for a time, and finding employment on honourable missions abroad for, those Portuguese individuals of whom the Brazilians are jealous, the purity of your Majesty's motives would be secured from the possibility of misrepresentation, the factions which disturb the country would be silenced or converted, and the feelings of the world, especially those of England and North America, would be interested in promoting the glory, happiness, and prosperity of your Imperial Majesty."

That advice, in the main adopted by the Emperor, led to a reconstruction of the Brazilian Constitution in its present shape, and so added another to the many great benefits which Brazil owes to Lord Cochrane. But the whole, and especially the last part of it, being directly at variance with the plans and interests of the Portuguese faction, it won for him much hatred and many personal troubles.

"That I, a foreigner, having nothing to do with national politics," he said, "should have counselled his Majesty to banish those who opposed him, was not to be borne, and the resentment caused by my recent services was increased to bitter enmity for meddling in affairs which, it was considered, did not concern me; though I could have had no other object than the good of the empire by the establishment of a constitution which should give it stability in the estimation of European states."

Consequently, in return for the great services he had conferred to Brazil, he received, as had been the case in Chili, little but insult and injury, the course of insult and injury being hardly stayed even during the period in which he was needed to engage in further services. The Emperor honestly tried to be generous; but he could not rid himself of the Portuguese faction, generally dominant in Brazil, and his worthy intentions were thwarted in every possible way. With difficulty could he secure for Lord Cochrane the confirmation of his patent as First Admiral, which has been already referred to. No great resistance was made to his conferment of the empty title of Marquis of Maranham, but he was not allowed to make the grant of land which was intended to go with the title and enable it to be borne with dignity. Prevented from being generous, he was even hindered from exercising the barest justice.