REPUBLICANISM AND EMANCIPATION
From 1808 to 1837 the tendency had been in the direction of democracy and decentralisation. Then the tide turned and from 1837 to the Paraguayan war the central government grew stronger and federalism weaker. The power of the Emperor reached its apogee in 1870. The senators had been personally selected by him and he could count on their gratitude and friendship. Deputies were elected indirectly by electors chosen by a suffrage nominally universal, but the elections—primary and secondary—were mere farces, absolutely controlled by the ministry which happened to be in power. The local governors and magistrates, the officers of the national guard, and the police, all dependent on the central government for their positions, formed a machine against which opposition was useless. If intimidation was not sufficient, the baldest frauds were shamelessly resorted to—false polling lists, manufactured returns, and the seating of contestants by the majority in the Chamber or the returning boards. Of this system the Emperor was the real beneficiary, for the Cabinets held at his pleasure, and if the majority of a Chamber did not sustain a ministry which he desired to keep in power, all he had to do was to order a dissolution. But this hybrid system contained in itself the elements of sure decay. The Emperor was no arbitrary despot and neither wished nor would he have been able to govern in complete defiance of public opinion. On the other hand, the system afforded no sure method of ascertaining public opinion nor of throwing a proper responsibility upon well-organised political parties.
With the close of the Paraguayan war a series of movements began which ended twenty years later with the overthrow of the empire. Brazil's history during those twenty years is an account of the republican propaganda, the abolition movement, the attempt to reform the elections, the religious agitation, the growth of positivist doctrines, the demand for economic independence by the great provinces, and finally the infiltration of liberalism and insubordination into the army. This evolution, however, affected principally the educated classes. The masses of the people were and still remain largely indifferent to the march of public events.
Commerce and industry continued to expand throughout the Paraguayan war. From 1865 to 1872 the annual revenues doubled, and though in 1868 the emissions of paper money had reduced its value one-half, it steadily rose thereafter until in 1873 it again reached par. Just after the war the budget balanced, and the production of coffee rose one-half. But with relief from financial pressure the Conservative ministers became extravagant, and when the great world panic of 1873 came both government and country were badly caught. A foreign loan of five millions sterling made in 1875 was not enough to meet the mounting deficits. In 1878 new issues of paper money were resorted to, and exchange dropped, remaining below par for ten years in spite of a subsequent doubling of coffee production and a great increase in the value of exports. Population, however, which had increased from five to ten millions from 1840 to 1870, in the next twenty years mounted to fifteen millions.
BRIDGE AT MENDANHA.
The suppression of the slave trade by the Aberdeen Act and the Queiroz law made it probable that the institution itself would ultimately disappear. Brazilian character and customs had always stimulated voluntary emancipation, and in Brazil the negro does not reproduce as rapidly as the white. In 1856 the slaves numbered two millions and a half, being nearly forty per cent. of the population, but in 1873 their number had fallen to 1,584,000, or only sixteen per cent. The institution was, however, socially and politically very strong. Slaves furnished nearly all the labour employed in the production of staple exports, and it was believed that emancipation would be followed by agricultural collapse. But the Emperor was too enlightened a Christian and too susceptible to the good opinion of the civilised world not be at heart an abolitionist. However, it was only at the height of his influence that he deemed it wise to force the consideration of abolition on the reluctant nation. Agitation had begun modestly in 1864; in 1866 gradual emancipation was seriously proposed, but the breaking out of the war caused the matter to be adjourned. In 1869 Joaquim Nabuco, father of the present Brazilian minister to Great Britain, succeeded in virtually committing the Liberal party to emancipation. With the return of peace the question was taken up vigorously. The reactionary Conservative Cabinet resigned rather than be an instrument of the Emperor's wishes as to emancipation, and Pimenta Bueno was appointed Prime Minister for the especial purpose of getting a law through Congress declaring all children born thereafter free. This statesman failed, but Rio Branco, father of the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, was more successful. After a bitter and prolonged parliamentary struggle, in which Rio Branco used every weapon that his position gave him in gaining and holding doubtful Congressional votes, the law was passed in 1871. Thereafter all children born of slave mothers were free, though they remained bound to service until twenty-one. The proprietors were also required to register all their slaves. Under the influence of these measures the number of slaves decreased with astonishing rapidity—falling from 1,584,000 in 1873 to 743,000 in 1887.
Rio Branco's victory disrupted the Conservative party, and after achieving it he was unable to hold his majority together. The Chamber was dissolved, and though the new one supported him half-heartedly the old line Conservatives had become deeply dissatisfied with the radical tendencies of the government and the Emperor. Public men of all parties awoke to realisation of the inconsistency between the constitution and the Emperor's personal power. Not much was said in the Chamber, but outside the republican propaganda assumed an active form, and the conviction fast crystallised that the empire could not last for many years. A republican press came into existence and a republican party was organised under the leadership of Saldanha Marinho, an able lawyer of Rio. Republican societies were formed in all the centres of population, but there was no thought of armed revolution. There is, indeed, no evidence that the Emperor ever opposed the republican propaganda, though occasionally he detached some of its able members by promotions to office.
