CHAPTER XVIII.

SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION.

THE first and greatest sugar-growing region of Brazil, Pernambuco, is exactly opposite the valley of the Congo; the mouth of the Amazon is opposite that of the Niger. With Africa thus so handy, it is no wonder the early planters in Brazil availed themselves of Ethiopian labor, and that the slave-trade soon grew into a profitable and persistent business. Immediately after Portugal's recognition of the independence of Brazil in 1826, a treaty was made between Great Britain and Brazil for the suppression of the slave-trade; however, in those times and for many years afterward, the influence of the slaveholding class in Brazil was powerful enough to counteract the wishes of any humane magistrate or statesman in that country who may have urged the enforcement of that treaty, and the slave-trade continued to flourish. Mr. Christie, a former British minister in Brazil, in his "Notes on Brazilian Questions," published in 1865, says of the action of the Government: "Left to itself, it did nothing; it treated for a long time with neglect representations of the English Government; it did not answer notes. When obliged to reply, it protested that its dignity did not allow it to act while pressed by a foreign government; it resented interference, and clamored to be left free to exe

cute its own laws, forgetting that treaty stipulations gave a right to England to interfere. At last, after force had been used, and the English Government was known to be serious, and there seemed no help for it, it has done what it ought to have done long before." Speaking of the action of the Brazilian authorities in regard to the treaty for the suppression of the slave-trade, Lord Aberdeen, in 1845, said, "With rare exceptions the treaty has been by them systematically violated from the period of its conclusion to the present time." At that time the clandestine importation of African slaves into Brazil was estimated at seventy thousand annually, of whom, no doubt, some are still toiling on plantations. Mr. Christie states that it was estimated that a million slaves had been imported since the formal abolition of the trade by treaty.

John Candler and Wilson Burgess, members of the Society of Friends, went from England to Rio de Janeiro, in 1852, with an address to the Emperor, and on their return from Brazil they wrote: "The late conduct of Great Britain in chasing slavers into the harbors of Brazil, and making seizures of them under its very forts, has contributed mainly to stimulate the Government of Brazil to put down the African slave-trade in that country. It deeply wounded the pride of the nation to see its past insincerity and bad faith thus exposed before the whole world; the Emperor, therefore, resolved to take the matter at once into his own hands, and by bold measures to crush the traffic." So the dispatch of Mr. Henry Southern, the British diplomatic representative in Brazil, of May 10, 1852, shows the admission of the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs that it was the compulsory measures of Great Britain which enabled the Brazilian Cabinet to influence their countrymen in co-operating to support,

or, at least, in not opposing, measures to put down the slave-trade.

In a letter of the distinguished Brazilian, Mr. Joaquim Nabuco, who has spent several years in England, and who received very strong support as candidate for deputy in his native city, Pernambuco, published September 11, 1884, he says: "The Conservative opposition now denounce the Emperor as the chief of the abolition propaganda, ascribe the Dantas project to the pressure of the Emperor, and endeavor by every means to identify him with abolitionism. Some of the Republicans-I say some, because the Republican party is to-day divided on the question of emancipation-declare that the Conservatives are serving the republic by their attacks upon the monarchy.. . . . There is no doubt but that from 1840 to 1850 the Emperor struggled constantly for the suppression of the slave-trade, encountering the greatest resistance; that from 1865 to 1871 he made great efforts for the freedom of the future offspring of slave mothers; and, finally, that in 1884 he resolutely decided on the liberation of slaves of sixty years of age and upward, and of others by means of emancipation. But this will not compare for example with the act of Alexander II. Dom Pedro II has reigned forty-four years, and the capital of the empire which boasts of being the first city in South America is yet a slavemarket."

Slavery having existed, as it still does, in all latitudes of Brazil, it has never occasioned that bitter local or sectional feeling which it caused in the United States. It could, therefore, have scarcely led to such a catastrophe as it produced in our country. Still, the Brazilians, in taking steps for emancipation, were probably somewhat influenced by American experience, as well as by the

reprobation of mankind, the steady and industrious behavior of the freed people in the United States affording an especially powerful argument in favor of liberation. And, it appears to me, the Brazilians are entitled to praise for wise statesmanship in having solved their slavery problem in a peaceful manner, even though their system of emancipation is slow.

The one important feature of the Emancipation Act of Brazil of September 28, 1871-sometimes called the Rio Branco law, from the name of the prime minister of the time--is the provision that all children born of slave mothers after the passage of that act shall become free on attaining the age of twenty-one years. A few hundred slaves belonging to the Crown were declared free; but the great mass of slaves born previous to September 28, 1871, were left in bondage. However, the act made some provision for a fund for the purchase and liberation of slaves. It provided that the tax on slaves, the tax on their sale or bequest, the proceeds of certain lotteries, the fines collected under the act, together with public appropriations and private donations, should constitute an emancipation fund, to be duly apportioned among the several provinces. The whole amount raised from these sources since the passage of the act has been, in round numbers, six and a half million dollars. By it some 20,000 slaves had been purchased and set free up to 1885, being at an average price for each one of three hundred and twenty-five dollars. It is estimated that from 80,000 to 100,000 have also been set free by private emancipation in the same time; also that 200,000 have died, making a decrease of about 320,000 in the number of slaves since the passage of the law. The number of slaves in Brazil, September 30, 1873, according to the registration

which was then assumed to be complete, was 1,540,796, so that the number now in the empire must be fully 1,200,000. Private emancipation is a matter of frequent occurrence all over the country, and is apparently encouraged by the popular sympathy. Indeed, in some localities the cause has advanced with enthusiasm. Especially in the early part of 1884, say in March, there was a strong anti-slavery agitation, resulting in the formal declaration of liberation in two of the northern provinces-Amazonas and Ceará. However, a senator has lately declared that slaves are still held in both those provinces, and I have myself had misgivings as to whether abolition or emancipation had been fully carried out there. In Rio de Janeiro mass-meetings and fairs were held, eloquent speeches delivered, streets were decorated, and other displays made in behalf of the abolition movement, which seemed to have the support of a considerable portion of the influential classes. Still, it must be remembered that there are over a million slaves in the empire, the most of whom are tenaciously held in the richest agricultural districts.

In regard to the children born of slave mothers after September 28, 1871, and who, by the terms of the law, are absolutely free at the age of twenty-one years, it may be supposed that such jealous and rigorous means of identity have been thrown around them that they will be able effectually to claim their liberty on the very day of their majority. As a means, and the only means, to this end, the Emancipation Act provides that they should all be registered in books kept by the parish priests. It must occasion regret to know that the work does not appear to have been very carefully attended to. The Minister and Secretary of State for the Department of Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works, in his annual report, dated May