It is scarcely necessary to name the mestizos, for they usually class with the mulattos; nor are they to be easily distinguished from some of the darker varieties of this cast. A dark coloured man of a disagreeable countenance and badly formed person is commonly called a mestizo, without any reference to his origin.
Yet one race of human beings remain to be spoken of; but the individuals who compose it are not sufficiently numerous to permit them to take their place among the several great divisions of the human family which form the population of Brazil, and therefore I did not rank this among the others which are of more importance. Still the çiganos[212], for thus they are called, must not be forgotten. I frequently heard of these people, but never had an opportunity of seeing any of them. Parties of çiganos were in the habit of appearing formerly once every year at the village of Pasmado, and other places in that part of the country; but the late governor of the province was inimical to them, and some attempts having been made to apprehend some of them, their visits were discontinued. They are represented as being a people of a brownish cast, with features which resemble those of white persons, and as being tall and handsome. They wander from place to place in parties of men, women, and children; exchanging, buying, and selling horses, and gold and silver trinkets. The women travel on horseback, sitting between the panniers of the loaded horses, and the young ones are placed within the panniers among the baggage. The men are excellent horsemen, and although the pack-horses may be overburthened, these fellows will only accommodate matters by riding slowly upon their own horses, and never think of dividing the loads more equally; but they preserve themselves and the animals upon which they ride quite unencumbered. They are said to be unmindful of all religious observances; and never to hear Mass or confess their sins. It is likewise said that they never marry out of their own nation.
There are now several British merchants established at Recife, and a consul likewise resides at that place; but at the time of my coming away, there was no protestant chapel, no clergyman, nor even a burial ground for our countrymen. An Act of Parliament has, I believe, provided for the establishment of these things, but no steps have been taken towards the accomplishment of the directions of the legislature. Without any outward appearance of religion, how are we to expect that the people of Brazil are to regard us as any thing better than what we were represented to them as being in former times?—as pagans, animals, and horses—pagoens, bichos, and cavallos, this is literally true; and although they are now aware that at any rate we have the forms of human beings, that we have the power of speech, and that we have our share of intellect in all the common transactions of the world, still how are we to look for respect from them towards a set of men, who have no appearance at least, of possessing any religious feelings? It should be recollected that we are living among a people who are deeply rivetted to their own forms and ceremonies of worship, whose devotedness to their church establishment surpasses every other feeling. It is not thus that the British nation is to become respectable; we may have relations of trade with these people, but we must be content to be merely regarded according to our utility; there can be no respect for our general character as a body of men, none of that regard which would make us listened to in any great question, which would make our opinions and our assertions depended upon as coming from men of steadiness,—of religious habits. Nor can we be accounted as more than residents for a time, we cannot be considered as an established community, who are thus without any common bond of union, who have not any general place of meeting, who have not any one point to which all are directed; we have no appearance of belonging to one nation, as if we were brethren meeting in a foreign land. To these political reasons for the establishment of a place of worship are to be added those which are of far greater importance, those to which no Christian ought to be indifferent. I well know that it is not with the merchants that the evil arises;—but enough, I will go no farther, although I could tarry long upon this subject. I wish however that I could have avoided the mention of it altogether. I might have done so, if I had not felt that I was passing by unnoticed a subject upon which I have often spoken whilst I was upon the spot; and there my sentiments are well known to most of those persons with whom I associated.
CHAPTER XIX.
SLAVERY.
THE general equity of the laws regarding free persons of colour in the Portugueze South American possessions, has been to a certain degree extended to that portion of the population which is in a state of slavery; and the lives of the slaves of Brazil have been rendered less hard and less intolerable than those of the degraded beings who drag on their cheerless existence under the dominion of other nations. The Brazilian slave is taught the religion of his master, and hopes are held out of manumission from his own exertions; but still he is a slave, and must be guided by another man’s will; and this feeling alone takes away much of the pleasure which would be felt from the faithful discharge of his duty, if it was voluntarily performed. The consciousness that if the directions were not willingly attended to, the arbitrary will of the master would enforce their performance, removes much of the desire to please; obedience to a command is not required with any idea that refusal can possibly ensue, and therefore no merit is attached to its accomplishment by him whose orders are obeyed; nor does the slave feel that he is doing in any degree more than would be enforced if he had made any doubts. The world has heard so much, and from so many quarters, of the enormities which have been committed by slave-owners in the colonies with which England has had any communication; both from her own possessions, and from those of other nations, that no doubts can be entertained of their existence. That such evil deeds are of frequent occurrence, I would not wish to suppose, though that they are dreadfully too frequent is well known; I had rather not be persuaded that man in so depraved a state is often to be met with;—that many civilized beings should have made such rapid returns to barbarism. I have to say, that in Brazil too, such instances of barbarity are spoken of—that they do exist; they are, however, of rare occurrence, they are seldom heard of, and are always mentioned with abhorrence; but it is enough that instances should be recorded, of the abuse of this absolute power of one man over another; it is enough that this absolute power itself should be allowed to continue, to render the system upon which it is founded an evil of such great importance, as to sanction all exertions for its removal, as to make any government overlook many inconveniences rather than increase the numbers of those human beings who suffer this dreadful degradation.
The Indian slavery has been for many years abolished in Brazil, and the individuals who are now in bondage in that country are Africans, and their descendants on both sides, or individuals whose mothers are of African origin; and no line is drawn at which the near approach to the colour and blood of the whites entitles the child, whose mother is a slave, to freedom. I have seen several persons who were to all appearance of white origin, still doomed to slavery.
Slaves, however, in Brazil, have many advantages over their brethren in the British colonies. The numerous holidays of which the Catholic religion enjoins the observance[213], give to the slave many days of rest or time to work for his own profit; thirty-five of these, and the Sundays besides, allow him to employ much of his time as he pleases. Few masters are inclined to restrain the right of their slaves to dispose of these days as they think fit, or at any rate few dare, whatever their inclinations may be, to brave public opinion in depriving them of the intervals from work which the law has set apart as their own, that their lives may be rendered less irksome. The time which is thus afforded enables the slave, who is so inclined, to accumulate a sum of money; however this is by law his master’s property, from the incapability under which a slave labours of possessing any thing which he can by right call his own. But I believe there is no instance on record in which a master attempted to deprive his slave of these hard-earned gains. The slave can oblige his master to manumit him, on tendering to him the sum for which he was first purchased, or the price for which he might be sold, if that price is higher than what the slave was worth at the time he was first bought[214]. This regulation, like every one that is framed in favour of slaves, is liable to be evaded, and the master sometimes does refuse to manumit a valuable slave; and no appeal is made by the sufferer, owing to the state of law in that country, which renders it almost impossible for the slave to gain a hearing; and likewise this acquiescence in the injustice of the master proceeds from the dread, that if he was not to succeed he would be punished, and that his life might be rendered more miserable than it was before[215]. Consequently a great deal depends upon the inclinations of the master, who will however be very careful in refusing to manumit, owing to the well-known opinion of every priest in favour of this regulation, to the feelings of the individuals of his own class in society, and to those of the lower orders of people, and likewise he will be afraid of losing his slave; he may escape with his money, and the master will then run much risk of never seeing him again, particularly if the individual is a creole slave[216]. In general therefore no doubts are urged, when application is made for manumission by a slave to his master; who is indeed oftentimes prepared for it by the habits of industry and regularity of his slave, and by common report among the other slaves and free persons upon the estate, that the individual in question is scraping together a sum of money for this purpose. The master might indeed deprive the slave of the fruits of his own labour, but this is never thought of, because the slave preserves his money in a secret place, or has entrusted it to some person upon whom he can depend, and would suffer any punishment rather than disclose the spot in which his wealth lies concealed. A still more forcible reason than any other, for the forbearance of the master, is to be found in the dread of acting against public opinion; in the shame which would follow the commission of such an act; and perhaps the natural goodness which exists in almost every human being, would make him shun such gross injustice, would make him avoid such a deed of baseness.