NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE spirit of Reform has spread to Brazil ; or, to speak more strictly, it has again become operative there, after a slumber of several years. Don PEDRO has been compelled to abdicate his throne, and his son reigns in his stead.
For some time past, it is known that much irritation had been felt by the Brazilians, on account of the partiality with which the Emperor treated, or was supposed to treat, his countrymen the Portuguese, Who had emigrated in the train of Donna MARIA. The indignation of the community had been excited by the at- tempt to involve Brazil in a war for the recovery of Portugal ; from which, if successful, they could anticipate nothing but an addition of burdens to themselves, and of power to their ruler, both of which it had long been their object to diminish. The changeable Councils and tyrannical disposition of Don PEDRO did not tend to .conciliate the favour of his subjects; who have not yet forgotten his treacherous and bloody attack on the legislative assembly in 1820, =any more than his double-dealing in the negotiations with his father at the time when the separation of the colony from the Mother-country was resolved on, or his brutality to his amiable and popular Queen.
While such was the state of public feeling, and even after PEDRO had received, in the shape of an address from some of the members of the Chamber of Deputies, a distinct intimation that a:continuance of the partiality which he had long shown to his European friends would induce the country to reclaim the admi- nistration of its own affairs, he saw fit to change his Ministry, for a set of men so wholly unpopular, that a general rising was the immediate Consequence of ' their appointment.. The disaffected advanced to the palace, to procure by force that deference to the public will which could not be obtained by entreaty. PEDRO called in his troops for protection, and was answered by their throwing down their arms. Nothing but a speedy flight or an unconditional surrender remained ;—he chose the former. The change of Ministry took place on the 5th of April ; on the 7th, the Emperor and his spouse, with a few attendants were received on board the Volage frigate, commanded by Lord COLCHESTER. PEDRO had previously issued a proclamation, in which he declared that he abdicated in favour of his son, a child of five years ofage.* The members of the Chambers, who happened to be at Rio or in its neighbourhood, immediately assembled, and appointed a tem- porary Regency, in the persons of FRANCISCO DE LIMA, CARCA- vsLas, and VEROUEINO ; and the Regency at once entered on their functions, by the appointment of . a popular Ministry, in lieu of that named by PEDRO. The following's a list of the new appointments—JOSE IGNACIO BORGES, Finance; GOYANA, Inte- rior; M. JOSE DE SA. FRANCA, Justice ; JOSE MANUEL DE MO- BARS, War; JOSE MANUEL DE ALMEIDA', Marine ; F. CARNE IRO DE CAMPOS, Foreign Affairs ; Joss JOAQUIN DE LIMA E SILVA, Commander of the Forces.
In addition to- the ex-Emperor and ex-Empress, who are on board the Volage, the Queen Donna MARIA, and her aunt and uncle, the Marchioness and Marquis of LOULE, are on beard the Seine French frigate; both of which vessels are now on the way, to England, and may be looked for every hour. , The Daphne had no sooner landed her passengers, than she sailed again for Lisbon, to make known-the-news of the revolution to MIGUEL.
Such are the. factsthat have reached us touching this not unim- portant event The downfal of PEDRO gives the coup de grace
td monarehy in the New World. The temporary recognition of the child; on whom the ex-Emperor has deemed himself authorized to confer a power Which he was no longer in a position to exer- cise, is only. the 'formal following up of an act pasSed by
the Chambers in 1825; by which they bound themselves to recognize, on the death of his father, the eldest son of Don Pknao
as their ruler. The times, however, have changed during the last six years ; and the minds of the Brazilians have changed along
is the youngest surviving child of the first Empress, and was born 2nd De- cember 1825.
with them. In a few months, Brazil will resemble in form, as it already does in substance, the States that surround it. There seems not the slightest reason why we as a nation should regret or fear the change. The holders of Portuguese Bonds are already in as desperate a condition as they can well be placed : the Brazilian securities, we rather think, will soon rise in value by the change from an improvident and capricious sovereignty to a sober re- public. Nothing is wanted to render Brazil commercially, as it is naturally, the richest state in America, but people and pains. Hitherto the human importations have been chiefly of a kind by which no country ever did or can prosper—slaves. The number of these miserable creatures annually carried to Brazil is beyond belief great—so great as seriously to affect their price in the mar- ket. If seems not unreasonable to hope, that the republic will submit, as the price of its recognition by England, to forego a traffic which is even more baneful to its subjects than its objects —which degrades the trader more than it does his living cargo. That never-failing source of moral degradation sealed up, and the remains of religious bigotry in the whites rernoved,—which, with the entire possession of political liberty, they soon mast be,—Brazil will present a fairer and less easily exhaustible field for European enterprise to work upon, than any other that the New or Old World possesses.
Among the particulars of the revolution which we have stated above, one is especially worthy of attention. PEDRO ordered his armed subjects to fire on his unarmed subjects—and they refused. Soldiers, all over the world, are beginning to see that Faction, of which they have so tong been the unreasoning and unresisting ser- vants, is a hard and selfish master, reaping where it has not sown, and gathering where it has not strewed—that the people are their brethren, with all the kindness and good feeling belonging to the term--,that in vindicating their rights, they are vindicating their own—that in putting them down they are exalting a power which is equally regardless of the people and of the instrument by which the people is held in bondage. When CHARLES called on the veterans of France to compel the acceptance by the Parisians of
his obnoxious ordinances, the "line" refused to embrue:their hands in the blood of their brethren for their tyrant's sake. When PEDRO, five thousand miles distant from • the scene of the Three Days,
called on his "line" to fire, they throw down their arms. The same game is threatened to be played by the Prussian troops, should they be sent to assert the claims of Holland over the free persons of the men of Luxemburg. The days are indeed gone by when states could be ruled on other principles than those of justice.
