MOST EXCELLENT SIR,
My letters 278-279, will have acquainted your Excellency of our proceedings here up to their respective dates, and will also have afforded the Imperial Government such information as I could collect regarding the origin and progress of the disputes which have so unhappily prevailed.
It was my hope that—by taking their implements of war from the hands of the contending parties, and removing the most disorderly portion of the military—the public mind would have subsided into tranquillity. It appears, however, that—from the constant alarm occasioned by the "Pedestres," and other irregular troops lately maintained by the President—the public still continue in dread of being exposed to outrages, similar to those lately committed on their persons and property. The terror excited is universal, and as the people must be well acquainted with the character and conduct of persons with whom they have been bred up, I cannot bring myself to believe—however desirous to support a President nominated by His Imperial Majesty—that all the respectable portion of the population, without exception, entertain fears that are groundless. Indeed, from all that I have seen or heard, there is but little reason to hope that his Excellency the President has any intention to govern this province on any other system than that of the Captains-General, under the old Portuguese government; that is to say, rather according to his own will than in conformity with the dictates of justice or equity.
Certain it is, that, up to the present moment, the Constitution has never been put in practice, and even military law has not been adhered to. Numerous persons have been banished without accuser or declared crime—others have been thrown into gaol—and the greater portion of the principal people who remained had—previous to our arrival—fled to the woods, to avoid being the objects of the like arbitrary proceedings.
The representations which I now enclose to your Excellency as a sample of the numerous documents of a similar nature addressed to me, will, at least, lead His Imperial Majesty to the conclusion that such complaints could not have arisen, and continued under the government of a person calculated to preside over the interests of so important a province.
Your Excellency will find a memorial from the French Consul, marked No. 7, and the other Consuls have only been restrained from sending similar representations from the consideration that, on the squadron quitting this port, the consequences might be highly prejudicial to their interests and those whom they represent.
I would further state to your Excellency the remarkable fact that the President—after having continued a high pay to the soldiery during the existence of those disorders of which they were the instrument—did, at the moment of my taking the command, send me an old order respecting the diminution of the pay of the troops, which order he himself had never put in execution. And it is still more extraordinary, that he since refused any pay whatever, to the small number of troops of the line, who are continued in service for the preservation of the tranquillity of the city.
Since my last letters, I have been using all possible diligence to get the remainder of the firearms out of the hands of the lower classes of the population. Many, however, have been withheld—a circumstance which gives additional importance to the extraordinary fact, which I have only by accident learned—that the Junta of Fazenda, acting under the President, issued an order on the 6th of December (an attested copy of which is enclosed), authorising the sale of powder, and that too, under the false pretence that "all motives for suspending the sale of powder had ceased." I have not words in which to express the astonishment I felt at this extraordinary proceeding. I shall only add that, as soon as it came to my knowledge, I gave orders that such sale should not be permitted, and I have since directed the whole of the powder in the magazines at Maranham to be embarked and deposited in a vessel near the anchorage of the ships-of-war; by which precaution I consider the security of the white population to be in a great measure secured, till His Imperial Majesty shall be enabled to take such steps as in his judgment may appear necessary.
Were I to detail to your Excellency all the facts that lead my mind to a conclusion that this province will be entirely lost to the empire unless a speedy remedy be applied to the evils which here exist—it would be necessary to trespass upon you at very great length; but as the brother of the Secretary of Government proceeds to Rio de Janeiro by the same conveyance as this, your Excellency and colleagues will be able to obtain from him such further information as may satisfy your minds regarding the state of this province.
(Signed) COCHRANE AND MARANHAÕ.