Meantime the standard of the camara had been displayed at one of the windows, and there the magistrates were placed in sight of the people. José Bonifacio appeared at another window, and addressed the people in a short, but energetic speech, calculated to give them courage, and at the same time to inspire peace and all good and orderly feeling. He then named, one by one, the members proposed by the chief citizens, to form the provisional junta, beginning with Joaŏ Carlos Augusto de Oyenhausen, to continue general of arms in the province. Each name was received with cheers.[38] The troops and people then marched in an orderly manner to the house of José Bonifacio, to install him formally as president, and thence to the cathedral where a Te Deum was sung. At night the theatre was illuminated as for a gala, the national hymn was sung repeatedly; and from that moment all remained quiet in the city, and resolved to maintain the constitution, and the Prince Regent, for whom they expressed unbounded attachment.
Nothing could have been so important to the interest of the Prince at that time. The Paulistas are among the most hardy, generous, and enlightened of the Brazilians. Their country is in the happiest climate. The mines of St. Paul's are rich, not only in the precious, but in the useful metals. Iron, so rich as to yield 93 per cent. and coal abound. The manufactures of that province are far before any others in Brazil. Corn and cattle are plenty there, as well as every other species of Brazilian produce. Agriculture is attended to, and the city by its distance from the sea, is safe from the attacks of any foreign power, while it is totally independent of external supplies.
Unfortunately, the port of Santos presented a different scene during the first days of June. The first battalion of the Caçadores assembled before the government house, and, accusing the governor and the camara of withholding their pay, seized and imprisoned them, in order to force them to give the money they demanded. Several murders were committed during the insurrection, and various robberies, both in the houses and the ships in the harbour. Some armed vessels were, however, speedily despatched from Rio, and a detachment of militia from St. Paul's. Fifty of the insurgents were killed, and two hundred and forty taken prisoners; after which, every thing returned to a state of tranquillity; and as the most conciliatory measures were adopted towards the people, the peace continued.
The next three months were spent almost entirely in establishing provisional juntas in the different capitals. Many of the captaincies had, upon swearing to maintain the constitution, spontaneously adopted that measure. Others, such as Pernambuco, had been restrained by their governors from doing so, until the Prince's edicts of the 21st of August, to that effect, reached them. These edicts were followed by another of the 19th of September, directing the juntas to communicate directly with the cortes at Lisbon; and the whole attention of the government was now directed to preserve tranquillity until the arrival of instructions from the cortes concerning the form of government to be adopted.
It was fondly hoped, that the presence of Brazilian deputies, the importance of the country, and the consideration that it had been the asylum of the government during the stormy days of the revolutionary war, would have induced the cortes to have considered it no longer as a colony, but as an equal part of the nation, and that it might have retained its separate courts, civil and criminal, and all the consequent advantages of a prompt administration of the laws.
Such was the state of Brazil, generally speaking, on our arrival in that country, on the 21st of September, 1821. Much that might be interesting I have omitted, partly because I have not so correct a knowledge of it, as to venture to write it; much, because we are too near the time of action to know the motives and springs that guided the actors; and much, because neither my sex nor situation permitted me to inform myself more especially concerning the political events in a country where the periodical publications are few, recent, and though by law free, yet, in fact, owing to the circumstances of the times, imperfect, timorous, and uncertain. What I have ventured to write is, I trust, correct as to facts and dates; it is merely intended as an introduction, without which, the journal of what passed while I was in Brazil would be scarcely intelligible.
