Meanwhile Dom Pedro, left behind in Brazil, had smiled upon those who desired independence of the mother-country which had long been but a blood-sucking vampire. By his complacency Dom Pedro won the privilege of leading the revolt against his own father and becoming the first emperor of Brazil with a liberal constitution back of him. Portugal made only the feeblest effort at resistance and Brazil was thenceforward independent. Its fuller history will be found in the later volume devoted to Spanish America.
The easy surrender of the richest of her colonies exasperated the absolutists still more against the pliant João, and Portugal proceeded to echo the almost incredible Spanish motto, “Hurrah for chains!”; to grow frantic for despotism; to curse those who tried to limit the power of oppression, and to exhibit the spectacle—no less astounding for being so common in history—of a people shedding its blood to destroy its own liberties.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[173] [“On December 27th, 1703, the famous Methuen Treaty was signed, by which Portuguese wines might be imported into England at a lower duty than those from France and Germany, in return for a similar concession to English manufactured goods. The immediate result of this treaty was that King Pedro acknowledged the archduke Charles, the English candidate, as king of Spain, and that he gave the English a base of operations in the peninsula. The ulterior result was that Englishmen in the eighteenth century drank port wine instead of claret and hock, while the Portuguese imported everything they wanted beyond the bare necessaries of life from England. This was an advantage to both nations, for Portugal is eminently an agricultural country with neither the teeming population nor the materials necessary for manufactures, while England obtained a friendly province from which to import the wine and produce of a southern soil, and a market for the sale of the products of her manufactories. The close connection thus formed went deeper than mere commerce; it established a friendly relationship between the two peoples, which was of infinite advantage to the smaller nation.”—Stephens.[d]
We shall see later that the Portuguese felt the treaty less a blessing than an incubus on their power to develop manufactures of their own.]
[174] [Pombal was born in 1699 of a wealthy and well-connected family, entered in the army as a private, but saw no service and retired; he then led a life of roistering notoriety, and had eloped with a niece of the count of Arcos. He was forty years old before he had an official position, and fifty-one before he became minister to the king.]
[175] [This was blamed to incendiaries, though it was inevitable that in such a falling of walls many houses should be set on fire without human aid, though humankind were ready enough to seize the chance for loot. A large part of the people fled to the quays to escape the falling buildings, but there a great tidal wave found them and sweeping the wharves clean drowned men, women, and children in thousands. Voltaire’s Candide includes a notable account of the catastrophe. Estimates of the loss run from fifteen thousand to one hundred thousand lives; thirty thousand being the most generally accepted.]
[176] [When the king in despair asked Pombal what was to be done, he replied, “Bury the dead and feed the living”; he is said to have spent eight days and nights in his carriage hurrying from place to place.]
[177] [Lord Mahon[j] says: “His majesty had debauched, besides the marchioness of Tavora, both the wife and the daughter of the duke of Aveiro.”]
[178] [See also the history of Spain for the account of the expulsion that resulted from Pombal’s initiation.]