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rying with them into the woods and mountains all their provisions and cattle, and whatever might be useful to the Invaders. And the Troops of the Country shall carry on against them an active warfare of Posts and Guerillas, avoiding every occasion of general Battle, until they succeed in freeing themselves from the Enemy.

V. That, from this moment, it is the duty of all Military and Civil Authorities to whom it may belong, to fortify all the Ports of Brazil, in which a Landing might be effected, under the most strict and rigorous responsibility.

VI. That if, by accident, any of the Provinces of Brazil should not be supplied with the necessary Ammunition and Ordnance for the Fortifications, the abovementioned Authorities will represent to this Court what they require, in order that they may be furnished therewith from hence, or they will immediately acquaint the nearest Province thereof, which shall be bound to give them all the succour necessary for the due fulfilment of such important duties.

The Civil and Military Authorities to whom the execution of this my Royal Decree belongs, will so execute and cause it to be executed, with all zeal, energy, and promptitude, under the responsibility of rendering themselves guilty of Treason should they neglect so to fulfil it. Palace of Rio de Janeiro, 1st of August, 1822.

[With the Initials of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent.] LUIZ PEREIRA DA NOBREGA DE SOUZA COUTINHO.

MANIFESTO of the Prince Regent of Brazil to Friendly Governments and Nations, relative to the Independence of Brazil.-6th August, 1822. Translation.)

I, AND the People who have recognized me as their Prince Regent, being desirous to preserve our Political and Commercial Relations with Governments and Nations, the Friends of this Kingdom, and of continuing to merit that approbation and esteem which the Brazilian character deserves from them, it behoves me to lay before them succinctly, but truly, the series of facts and motives that have induced me to accede to the general will of the People of Brazil, who have proclaimed in the face of the Universe its Political Independence, and their wish, as a Sister Kingdom, and as a great and powerful Nation, to preserve, pure and inviolate, their imprescriptible rights, which Por tugal has constantly attacked, and now attacks more than ever, since the so-much-praised political regeneration of the Monarchy by the Cortes of Lisbon.

When this rich and vast Brazilian Region first accidentally presented itself to the eyes of the adventurous Cabral, avarice and religious pro selytism, and the incitements to discovery and Colonization, immediately induced him to possess himself of it as a Conquest; and by Laws

blood, dictated by bad passions, and sordid interests, the Portuguese tyranny was established. The uncivilized Native, and the European Colonist, were obliged to tread the same path of wretchedness and slavery. If they dug into the bowels of their Mountains to extract from them their gold, absurd Laws, and the Quinto Tax quickly came to disgust them in their hardly commenced labours; at the same time that the Portuguese Government, with insatiable voracity, devoured the treasures which beneficent Nature supplied, causing the unfortunate Mines to be encumbered with the weight of the most odious of tributes, the Capitation Tax. They wished that the Brazilians should pay even for the air they breathed, and the ground on which they walked. If the industry of a few enterprizing Men endeavoured to give a new form to the productions of their soil, wherewith to cover the nakedness of their Children, tyrannical Laws prevented it, and punished their praiseworthy efforts. The Europeans have always studied to keep this fine Region in the most rigid and abject dependence upon the Mother Country, because they considered it necessary, for the security of their dominion, to obstruct or impoverish the perennial fountain of its riches. If the activity of a Colonist, offered to his Fellow-citizens from time to time some new branch of rural economy, by the introduction of exotick, useful, and valuable plants, onerous Imposts soon came to destroy such happy undertakings. If adventurous Men had the courage to change the course of the streams, in order thereby to obtain diamonds from the earth, they were immediately prevented by the cruel Agents of Monopoly, and punished by inexorable Laws. If the superfluity of its productions invited and called for an exchange for Foreign productions, Brazil, deprived of the Markets of Nations, and consequently of competition in them, which rendered its purchases dear, and its sales cheap, had no alternative but to send them to the Ports of the Mother Country, and thus more and more to stimulate the sordid desire of wealth, and preponderance of its Tyrants. If, finally, the Brazilian, to whom bountiful Nature has given talents of no ordinary kind, were desirous of being instructed in the arts and sciences, the better to understand his rights, or to know how to avail himself of the natural gifts with which Providence has endowed his Country, it was necessary that he should go for that purpose to Portugal, which scarcely possessed any such information, and from whence, in many instances, he was not permitted to return.

Such was the fate of Brazil for nearly 3 Centuries; such the narrow policy that Portugal, always illiberal in its views, always avaricious and tyrannical, adopted to consolidate its dominion, and maintain its factitious splendour. Colonists and Natives, Conquered and Conquerors, their Children and their Children's Children, all were confounded; all were subjected to one general anathema. And, as the

ambition of power, and the thirst of gold, are ever insatiable and without bounds, Portugal did not cease constantly to send hither merciless Bashaws, corrupt Magistrates, and shoals of Fiscal Agents of every description, who, in the excess of their passions and avarice, destroyed the ties of morality, publick as well as private; despoiled the scanty produce of the toil and labour of the Inhabitants, and tore out the entrails of Brazil, which nourished and enriched them, in order that the People, reduced to utter despair, like submissive Mussulmans, should go in pilgrimage to the new Mecca, to purchase, with rich gifts and offerings, a life which, however obscure and languid, should be at least supportable and tranquil. If Brazil resisted this torrent of ills, if it improved in the midst of such shameful oppression, it was owing to its strong and animated Sons, to whom Nature has given a gigantic form; it was owing to the beneficence of that kind Mother, who gave them continually renewed vigour to overcome, as trifles, those physical and moral obstacles which their ungrateful Parents and Brothers had purposely opposed to their increase and prosperity.

Nevertheless Brazil, still suffering under the recollection of her past misfortunes, being naturally good and generous, received with inexpressible gladness the August Person of the Lord Don John the VIth, and all the Royal Family. She did still more, she opened her hospitable arms to the Nobility and People who emigrated, in consequence of the invasion of Portugal by the Despot of Europe. She contentedly took upon her the burthen of the Throne of my August Father; she preserved with splendour the diadem that encircled his forehead; she furnished with generosity and profusion the expences of a new and embarrassed Court; and, moreover, notwithstanding the great distance, and without any particular interest of her own, but solely on account of the simple ties of fraternity, she likewise contributed to the expences of the War which Portugal so gloriously maintained against its Invaders.

And what has Brazil received in return for so many sacrifices? A continuation of the old, and an increase of the new abuses, introduced partly by imbecility, and partly by immorality and crime. Such a state of things called loudly for a prompt reform of the Government, for which the Brazilians were fully qualified, by their advancement in knowledge, and by the rights, of which they could not be deprived, belonging to them, as Men, forming the greater as well as the richer portion of the Portuguese Nation; favoured of Nature, by their centrical and geographical position in the midst of the Globe, by their extensive Ports and Harbours, and by the natural riches of their soil. Nevertheless, sentiments of excessive loyalty, and extreme love for their Brethren of Portugal, silenced their complaints, induced them to suppress their anxious wishes, and caused them to yield the glorious palm to their Fathers and Brothers of Europe.

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When the cry for the political regeneration of the Monarchy arose in Portugal, the People of Brazil, relying upon the inviolability of their rights, and incapable of suspecting their Brethren of different sentiments or less generosity, gave up to those ungrateful Men the defence of their most sacred interests, and the care of their complete reconstitution; and, with perfect confidence, they tranquilly reposed upon the brink of the most dreadful precipice. Trusting every thing to the wisdom and justice of the Lisbon Congress, Brazil expected to receive from it all that of right belonged to her. How far was she then from presuming that the same Congress was capable of so basely betraying her hopes and interests ;-interests so closely connected with the general interests of the Nation!

Brazil now knows the error into which she had fallen; and, had not the Brazilians been moved by that generous enthusiasm which often mistakes a transient light for the true light of reason, they would have seen, in the first Manifesto which Portugal addressed to the Powers of Europe, that one of the concealed objects of the pretended regeneration, consisted in the crafty re-establishment of the old Colonial System, without which Portugal has always believed, and still believes, that she cannot be rich and powerful. Brazil did not foresee that her Deputies, in going to a strange and distant Country, would have to contend against the inveterate prejudices and caprices of the Metropolis, and, wholly deprived of the support of Friends and Relatives, would inevitably fall into the state of nullity in which we have beheld them: but it was necessary to go through the severe lessons of experience to discover the delusion of her mistaken hopes!

But the Brazilians deserve to be excused, for their candid and generous minds must have had great difficulty in believing that the boasted regeneration of the Monarchy was to begin with the re-establishment of the odious Colonial System. It was very difficult, and indeed almost impossible, to reconcile this absurd and tyrannical plan, with the lights and liberality so loudly proclaimed by the Portuguese Congress. It was still more incredible, that there should be Men so bold and senseless as to dare, (as I shall hereafter describe) to attribute to the wish and orders of my August Father, the King Lord Don John the VIth, to whom Brazil owes her rank of Kingdom, the idea of destroying at one blow the finest deed that is to immortalize him in the History of the Universe. So great an attempt at deception is certainly not to be credited; facts however speak for themselves; against manifest truth, there can be no sophistry.

So long as my August Father was not forced, by secret and perfidious means, to abandon the shores of Janeiro, again unfortunately to inhabit those of the old Tagus, the Congress of Lisbon affected to entertain sentiments of fraternal equality, and enlightened principles of reciprocal justice, towards Brazil, declaring formally, in the XXIst

Article of the Bases of the Constitution, that the Fundamental Law, which was about to be organized and promulgated, would only be applicable to this Kingdom, in the event of its Deputies, after they were assembled, declaring such to be the will of the People whom they represented; but what was the alarm of those People, when they found, in contradiction to that Article, and in contempt of their inalienable Rights, a fractional part of the General Congress, deciding upon their dearest interests? when they saw the dominant Party in that incomplete and imperfect Congress, legislating upon subjects of transcendant importance, and peculiarly relating to Brazil, in the absence of perhaps two-thirds of its Representatives.

That dominant Party which, even to this day, and without restraint, insults the understanding and probity of the sensible and upright Men who are to be found in the Cortes, has tried all the means of a dark and infernal policy, to deceive credulous Brazil, with an apparent fraternity which never dwelt in their hearts, and has insidiously profited by the errors of the governing Junta of Bahia (which it secretly promoted), to break the sacred bonds which unite all the Provinces of Brazil under my legitimate and paternal Regency. How could the Congress recognize in that factious Junta a legitimate authority, to sever the political ties of the Province, and to separate it from the centre of the System to which it was bound, and this too after the Oath of my August Father to the Constitution promised to the whole of the Monarchy ?—What right had that Congress, whose National Representation was then limited to Portugal alone, afterwards to sanction such illegal and criminal acts, of the most fatal conse quences to the United Kingdom? And what were the advantages which Bahia was to have derived from them?—the vain and ridiculous name of a Province of Portugal; and, what is worse, the evils of civil war and anarchy, with which it is now overwhelmed, in consequence of the fault of its former Government, (which was sold to the Demagogues of Lisbon,) and of some other unenlightened Men with anarchical and republican ideas. Will it be said, that Bahia, as a Province of the poor debased Kingdom of Portugal, if it could so maintain itself, would be in a better condition than as one of the first Provinces of the vast and powerful Empire of Brazil? But the views of the Congress were different. Brazil was no longer to be a Kingdom; she was to descend from her rank, and to retrograde in the political order of the Universe, to receive new chains, and to humble herself, like a Slave, at the feet of Portugal.

But we must not stop here.-Let us examine the progressive march of the Congress. They authorized and established anarchical Provincial Governments, independent of each other, but subject to Portugal. They destroyed the responsibility, and the mutual harmony, of the Civil, Military, and Financial Powers, without leaving

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