The North American Review/Volume 158/Number 446/Republicanism in Brazil

by Salvador de Mendonça

REPUBLICANISM IN BRAZIL.

BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE BRAZILIAN MINISTER AT WASHINGTON, SALVADOR DE MENDONÇA.

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When, on the 15th of November, 1889, the telegraph announced to the world that a republic had been proclaimed in Brazil, “in the empire of good old Dom Pedro,” the astonishment was general. It was like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky. The opinion was universal that the Brazilian nation, which, on the 22d of September, 1822, had received its independence from the hand of Dom Pedro I., and two years later its constitution, was enjoying, after sixty-five years of parliamentary government under a monarchy, an enviable prosperity. There was a vague knowledge, it is true, that the first emperor of Brazil had been forced to abdicate in 1831 by a forcible expression of the popular will; but the idea generally entertained of Pedro II., based on his really lofty moral qualities, but propagated and exaggerated by those whose interested admiration was given rather to the monarch than to the man, had surrounded his name and his reign with an aureole so brilliant that the whole world regarded as indisputable the excellence of the monarchical government of Brazil.

To such as were intimately acquainted with the internal condition of the empire, the absorption of all the constitutional powers by the crown, the farcical character of the electoral syatem which indorsed every act of the monarch, the intensified centralization which was stifling the provinces of the empire in the political embrace of the court, the atrophy and decay of the several members of the body politic, out of reach of the vitality of the centre, the constant deficits in the budget covered by the chronic abuse of national loans,—to those, above all, who knew that the heiress to the throne prided herself on her resemblance to her grandfather, the impetuous, irritable, tyrannous Pedro I, rather than to her father, whose good-nature was only equalled by his political incapacity—the wife of a prince of the Orleans family, remarkable only for his avarice and his ignorance of the art of government,— to such the imperial legend did not inspire the same confidence in the future of the Brazilian nation.

The doubts that hovered over the third reign grew thicker as the infirmity of the aged Emperor increased, in the period beginning in 1887. He was constitutionally incapacitated for the exercise of the functions of his high office. After his return from Europe, in 1888, his attendant physician, Dr. Motta Maia, was employed near him in the discharge of duties not provided for in the constitution. He acted as a sort of chancellor, arranged the audiences given by the Emperor to his ministers, who no longer met in council with the chief of the nation, and the latter dispatched the business of each portfolio as far as permitted by his watchful attendant, and as well as his enfeebled faculties would allow.

At that time, full of apprehension even for those who were interested in the maintenance of the monarchy, and while the Joam Alfredo cabinet was still in power, a combination of the partisans of the empire in the Liberal and Conservative parties was suggested, whereby the Emperor should be declared physically incapacitated to reign. At that time, however, the palace of the imperial princess in the little city of Petropolis was the scene of chicanery and conflicting intrigues, and the future chief of the ministry, the Viscount of Ouro Preto, was already sure of succeeding Joam Alfredo, supported by the zeal of two friends in the princess’ household, and it was thought more prudent to make haste slowly and to gather the fruits of the inauguration of the third reign under the direction of the Liberal party, rather than share them with political adversaries. It was by this arrangement alone that the old monarch was spared the fate of another King Lear.

The history of the Brazilian monarchy, as well as that of the evolution of republican opinion in Brazil, are yet to be written, particularly in its relation to the strife which in that part of the American continent was carried on for a century between monarchical and democratic principles.

The present writer disturbed and full of anxiety at this moment in which a crisis is approaching in the combat which must end sooner or later in victory for the republic, and while the friends of free institutions on this continent are waiting more or less anxiously for the result, does not propose to write that history. Nevertheless, it does not appear inopportune to delineate briefly the general features of that struggle begun in the colonial period and continued to this day.

Republicanism in Brazil has its heroes and its martyrs worthy of historic mention when the annals shall be written of that nation to which was apportioned a territory as vast as that of the great North American Union, and which in the next century is destined to play in South America the same part as that which in this century and in this portion of the continent has been taken by the United States.

Even before the French invasion of the Liberian peninsula had, in 1808, forced the royal family of Portugal to take refuge in Brazil, already in the free mountains of Minas the seed scattered to all the winds by the movement for independence in North America had germinated.

In an almost forgotten page of the diplomatic correspondence of this country, one of the founders of the great American Union refers to that fact in language which under the present circumstances it is pleasant to recall. Thomas Jefferson, writing to John Jay from Marseilles on May 4, 1787, alludes to an interview which he, had recently had in Nismes with a young Brazilian student who had come to consult him in regard to a proposed republican movement in Brazil. The young man had represented to him that many enlightened and patriotic men in his country were eager to follow the example of the United States and rid themselves of the oppressive yoke of the mother-country. The difficulties in the way of such an attempt would be almost insuperable unless they were supported by some friendly nation, and for such support they naturally turned to the great American republic.

The movement in Minas, although without the aid of the most enlightened men of Rio de Janeiro and the north, had at its head a band of magistrates, men of letters and patriots, among whom were Colonel Alvarenga Peixoto, Judge Thomas Antonio Gonzaga, the lawyer Claudio Manoel Dacosta, poets all three, whose writings were the beginning of our national literature, and Silva Xavier, commonly known as Tiradentes.

Betrayed and denounced to the Portuguese governor, they were arrested, tried, and convicted. Claudio Manoel was strangled in prison for fear that the eloquence of his defence would light the flames of independence in the hearts of the oppressed people; Gonzaga was banished to Africa and ended his days in exile; Maria I. of Portugal commuted the death penalty in the case of Alvarenga Peixoto and sixteen of his companions, whose banishment for life was considered as an act of royal mercy; but the rigors of the law were visited on Tiradentes, who was hanged in Rio de Janeiro. His body was quartered and his members distributed among various cities of the interior, his house was razed to the ground and its site sown with salt, while his descendants were declared infamous forever.

The impression left upon the people by the martyrdom of these patriots had not yet been effaced when the royal family of Braganza, flying from Lisbon, arrived at Rio de Janeiro. The head of the family was the prince regent Dom Joam, afterward Joam VI. of Portugal, a cowardly prince, whose chief claim to distinction was the number of roast chickens he ate daily, while leaving the direction of political affairs to his wife, the princess Carlotta, a Spaniard by birth, who at once involved Brazil in political intrigues on the Rio de la Plata.

Between his stupid father and ambitious mother grew up the prince Dom Pedro, badly educated, licentious, and ambitious for power. This royal trio came to plant in America the principles of absolute monarchy which the storm of the French Revolution had swept from Europe. For the growth of such a plant the climate of America could not be propitious, and but few years had passed when the first note of resistance was sounded in the north of Brazil.

Republican revolutions broke out in Pernambuco in 1817 and in 1821, in Bahia in the latter year, and in the states of the north in 1824. The last-named revolt took the name of the “Confederation of the Equator.”

Although these attempts at republican independence ended in disaster, they were evidence of the spirit of freedom that existed in Brazil; and the names of those who took part in them, of Domingos Martins, the priests Roma and Caneca of Ratcliff, and Carvalho, all victims of the monarchy, have never been forgotten by the people.

The patriots of Sao Paulo, Minas, and Rio, after the return of Joam VI. to Portugal, encouraged the ambition of Prince Dom Pedro, and by offering him the empire brought about the independence of the country in 1822. They had secured from the prince the promise of a representative government under a constitution ; but when the constitutional convention elected for that purpose had framed a constitution, it was dissolved by force of arms, and the assembly was dispersed under the menace of a park of artillery posted in front of the building where it was sitting.

Instead of a constitution adopted by the representatives of the people, Brazil was given one dictated by the prince, into which was introduced the so-called moderative power belonging exclusively to the crown, and which effectually overshadowed all the other powers of the charter.

Pedro I. governed Brazil with the same whip with which he drove his carriage horses, and whose lash was more than once felt by the press. His complaints in the circle of his favorites against the radical press instigated the assassination of Libero Badaro in Sao Paulo.

In the desire of securing the election of his minister Maia by the vote of the people already estranged from him, he made a visit to the State of Minas, where, instead of the rejoicing with which he had been received in the interior at the proclamation of independence, he met with a cold reception from a tax-burthened people who had lost their illusions, and listened to masses of requiem chanted for the murdered republican journalist.

Returning to Rio de Janeiro he was forced by the people of the capital assembled in the public square to remove from his head the imperial crown on the 7th of April, 1831. The exotic monarchical plant appeared to have reached the end of its brief existence, but the leaders of the revolutionary movement, or at least the most influential of them, as Vergueiro and Evaristo da Veiga, advised the continuance of the existing form of government.

The son of the deposed emperor was not yet six years old; a tutor was appointed for him, and a regency established which lasted ten years, and under which the scope of constitutional liberty was considerably broadened while the evolution of the republican idea still went on. Some time after, during the reign of Pedro II., when the ex-Regent Feijó engaged in the revolution of of Sao Paulo, crushed as well as that of Minas by General Caxias, he declared with bitterness that the error of the Brazilians had been in warming in their bosom the viper of monarchy whose victims they had become.

The reign of Pedro II., which began in 1841, is divided into three distinct periods: the first is that of his apprenticeship in the art of government under the influence of those who were charged with his tuition, of whom one was a bishop and the other a courtesan ; the second is that of the conservative predominance characterized by the reaction against the liberal advances of the regency ; and the third is that of a pseudo-philosophy in which the monarch attempted to compensate for the public liberties more or less suppressed, by improved material conditions.

The writer of this article, who was personally well acquainted with the second emperor, and who knows by experience that the liberty of the press, at least, was respected under his reign, will be the last to refuse to do him justice.

As the period of the regency has bequeathed to Brazilian history the names of Feijó and Bernardo de Vasconcellos, so the reign of Pedro II. has furnished those of illustrious Brazilians, who, under the very monarchy, have materially advanced the cause of liberty.

Not to lengthen too much the historic roll, it will be enough. to mention here Eusebio de Queiroz, the typical constitutional minister ; Carneiro Leam, the advocate of the policy of conciliation, which ended the ostracism of the liberal party ; Rio Branco, the originator of the legislative movement for the abolition of slavery, and José Antonio Saraiva, who gave Brazil the electoral law the sincere execution of which would be sufficient to lead to a republican form of government.

Indeed, in all the long reign of Pedro II. there are only three things in his political conduct which reach the altitude of his moral stature—the liberty of the press, the abolition of slavery and the disinterested patriotism which in the last days of the government inspired the aged emperor, as was shown by his willingness to abdicate in favor of the republic.

This consent to abdicate, unique of its kind, deserves more particular mention, since it offers an opportunity for throwing light upon the present political situation in Brazil.

In 1869 certain men of undoubted political sincerity who had lost faith in the programme of the liberal party, which, while in opposition identified itself with the most radical and extreme opinions, and when called to power became the subservient instruments of the personal power of the crown, abandoned their former leaders, and through the press and clubs took up again the advocacy of republican principles. From the publication of the manifesto of the new party to the proclamation of the republic, on the 15th of November, 1889, the republican cause gained ground rapidly. Men like Saldanha Marinho, Quintino Bocayuva, Aristides Lobo, Felicio dos Santos, Campos Salles, Prudente de Moraes, Assis Brazil, Americo Lobo, Rangel Pestana, Lucio de Mendonca, Demetrio Ribeiro, Paes de Carvalho, Martins, junior, Alexandre Stockler, Silva Jardim and Lopes Trovam, in the press, in the parliament and in public meetings for twenty years fearlessly defended their principles.

These apostles of the republican doctrine demanded the amendment of the monarchical constitution in the ways provided for by that document ; they desired the advent of the republic by means of victory gained at the polls—in a word, they aimed at the establishment of the republic in and by the parliament.

In May, 1889, tho Joam Alfredo cabinet was overthrown, and when the Viscount of Ouro Preto had already reached an understanding with the imperial princes in regard to the twofold succession of the cabinet and the throne, the old emperor unaware of this arrangement, sent for the statesman Saraiva, the most loyal of the prime ministers of his reign.

Saraiva, with the clearness of perception that characterized this statesman, saw that the republic was inevitable and close at hand, and was afraid that it would come accompanied by civil war. Answering the summons of the Emperor, he advised him to make terms with the cause that was destined to triumph. He told him that his prime minister should offer in the Parliament plans of reform so radical that the transition from monarchy to republic could be effected without a shock. This could be done by means of a federation of the provinces with governments having largely increased powers. The Emperor accepted the advice of the old statesman, invited him to carry this policy into effect, and made ready in this way to surrender his power into the hands of popular sovereignty.

Saraiva refused to accept this charge ; for he knew that Ouro Preto had already determined upon another plan, and that he could not depend upon the support of the majority of his own party.

So instead of Saraiva, Ouro Preto became chief of the cabinet, and the Brazilian monarchy, instead of bequeathing to history a fair page of disinterested patriotism on which the person of Pedro II. would have figured at the head of all monarchs, it left that in which are recorded the thanks of Count d’Eu to the provisional government for the settlement of the imperial succession for the sum of two and a half millions of dollars.

In its haste to carry into effect the original purposes of its programme the historical republican party allied itself with the military class, and, supported by it, unexpectedly proclaimed the republic. The enterprise was not difficult, for the empire had not a single defender left. Was it wisely or unwisely done ? The answer is not easy to give. In the very Parliament elected under the Ouro Preto ministry, Saraiva could have easily obtained the predominance and carried out his plan for a federation of the provinces, and the following legislature would have with the same ease voted for the establishment of the republic. Such would doubtless have been the dictate of prudence; as in that case the new institutions would be the natural outgrowth of the representative system. But what is done cannot be undone. If the step was taken hastily, it was at least in the right direction.

The chief danger would be in looking backwards. The revolution has given to Brazil republican institutions which must be defended at all hazards, leaving whatever defects they may have to be remedied by wisdom after the safety of those institutions has been assured.

Were the republic as bad as its worst enemies paint it, it would still be preferable to any monarchy that could be set up on its ruins. No restoration, however, is now possible in Brazil.

The efforts to effect it would undoubtedly excite a civil war whose bitterness would be intense and duration indefinite, but whose result no republican can doubt.

Salvador de Mendonca.