H ER MAJESTY'S Consuls in Brazil make half-yearly reports to the
Foreign Office of the prices of slaves. The last re- turns laid before Parliament are for the half-year ending June 30, 1862. In Rio de Janeiro the price for males employed in agricul- ture was from 1071. to 1931., and females from 107/. to 1601; for domestic service, males were from 130/. to 2151., females, from 1071. to 1901. The returns show, as is natural, a great increase in the value of slaves in Brazil since the cessation of the slave trade.
In the last Slave-trade Blue-book, presented last session, is a cor- respondence of Mr. Vereker, Consul at Rio Grande do Sul, with and about an Englishman who had purchased a slave, and to whom the Consul very properly addressed a caution as to the penalties to which he made himself liable under Lord Brougham's Act, 6 and 7 Vic., C. 98. The worthy Englishman had become a naturalized Brazilian, and his answer to the Consul was stout and bold. "I suppose that your reason for questioning me on this subject was that you supposed me to be a British subject, which I beg to in- form you that I am not, as I am a legally naturalized citizen of Brazil, therefore a subject of his Majesty Dom Pedro II., Imperador de Brazil, enjoying all privileges and rights of a citizen of Brazil, and by adopting the Brazils as my country I by this act renounced all rights and titles that I have held, or might hold, as a British subject for the future ; therefore, as a subject of his Majesty Dom Pedro IL, I consider that lam at perfect liberty to purchase or sell a slave if I think proper, as long as ever the laws of my country, the Brazils, will permit me to do so." Lord Russell in- structed the Consul to tell this bold Brazilian that "if found any- where within British jurisdiction, he will be liable to prosecution, - as he cannot renounce his allegiance to her Majesty."
This is, of course, not a solitary instance. Messrs. Kidder and Fletcher, the American missionaries, in their well-known work, "Brazil and the Brazilians," say, "There are many Englishmen who have long held Africans in bondage, some for a series of years, and others have purchased slaves since 1843, when what is called the Lord Brougham Act was passed. The English Mining Company, whose stockholders are in Great Britain, but whose field of operation is St. John del Rey, Brazil, own about eight hundred slaves, and hire one thousand more." It appears there are many Englishmen in Brazil who, for privileges of trade, become naturalized as Brazilians ; and these, it may be observed in passing, are chiefly the Englishmen, more Brazilian than Brazilians, who side with the Brazilian Government. When they criticize and oppose the Eng- lish Government, they are ostentatiously proclaimed Englishmen.
The Brazilian nation is itself an owner of slaves. The number of national slaves in Brazil is stated in the last budget at 1,500. One of the deputies, Senhor Madureira, in last year's session of the Legislature, spoke out about these national slaves and the free Africans. An extract of his speech is printed in the slave-trade correspondence presented to Parliament in 1863 :— "The budget also treats of free Africans and slaves of the nation. I have never taken part in the discussions of the budgets without thinking of these two unhappy classes, because Brazil exists not for Brazilian citizens only, but for all its inhabitants. The slavery of free Africans still continues; the Africans taken in Brazil have all a right to their liberty. The decree of 1853, which mentioned fourteen years for their emancipation, was a provisional decree which cannot be regarded as a permanent law.
"With respect to the slaves of the nation, I fear that thd Minister of Finance adopts the idea of sending these slaves of the farms of the interior to labour in the public works of the capital. Can there be greater barbarity than to take these poor men from the farms where they are established, though they are slaves of the nation ? I think that the managers of these farms will not be so cruel as not to allow them to make their huts where they have their small allotments. How does the Government come to under- stand that it may sell the national farms to one set of men, and the national slaves to another, when our principles recommend that the nation should be just to its slaves, preserving them in their homes, and should also set an example, beginning by slowly emancipating its own slaves?"
The Senator Silveira da Motta, from whom we quoted in the former article, has inveighed lately against the national slaves, and denounced a sale since consummated of a number of slaves belonging to the Dowager Empress of Brazil.
"Even the nation," spoke Senhor Silveira da Motta, May 17th, 1861, "represented by her Government, is a slaveholder ! Would it not be proper that in a State which by law condemns slavery, and which only from considerations of political convenience maintains it, would it not be proper that in that country the Government at least should not hold slaves? We are now threatened with a great public sale of slaves belonging to the Duchess of Braganza (the Dowager Empress) on an estate called Macaco.' The slaves are to be sold by auction. Almost the whole of them were born at that place ; the fathers, mothers, children, and grandchildren are all to be put up to auction, and will be separated. It is a hardship to grant permis- sion to sell the father and mother separately from the son scarcely eighteen years old ; it is a hardship, a profanation, and disowning of the rites of our religion, to allow the slaveowner to sunder these slaves, who have been married in church."
These are admirable words. But the two speakers whom we have quoted have no party to support them. They are almost slone in the Legislature. Their good seed falls on barren ground, and as yet there is no fruit. Mr. Brantley Moore gravely informed the House of Commons (July 16th) that there was a society in Rio, with the Emperor at its head, for buying the freedom of slaves born in the country, especially women, and that large sub- scriptions were given by the Emperor and citizens. We should like much to see the reports of the operations of this society. Did it interfere in the sale of the slaves of the Emperor's mother? We hope that the constituency of Lincoln, in which the clergy are an important element, will extract some more information on this subject from the Brazilian merchant who represents them.
We return to the subject of the free,. Africans, in whom Eng- land is specially interested, and for whom she is responsible. They are Africans, with their progeny, who have been rescued from Brazilian slave-trade vessels by English cruisers, set free by sentences of an English and Brazilian Mixed Commission Court which sat at Rio 011845 (when the Brazilian Government set aside the Mixed Commissions and obliged Lord Aberdeen to pass his famous Act), and handed over to the Brazilian Government, under a provision of a treaty which stipulates that "they are to be employed as servants or free labourers," and that the Brazilian Government "guarantees" their liberty to England. The Bra- ?Mans have made a law subjecting these free Africans to a fourteen years' apprenticeship before giving them letters of emancipation. But eighteen years have passed away since the Mixed Commission of Rio de Janeiro ceased to exist; therefore the fourteen years' ap- prenticeship must have expired for all. The series of Slave-trade Blue-books B is full of complaints on this subject from our Ministers since 1845,—from Sir James Hudson down to Mr. Christie. In November of last year the Brazilian Government issued regulations for the free Africans in a place called Itapura, described as remote, difficult of access, and unhealthy, which. led Lord Russell to send to our Minister at Rio instructions couched in the following language :—" The effect of the regulations recently issued for the government of the negroes at Itapura is practically to consign to six years' forced servitude men, women, and children who are free according to the showing of the Brazilian authorities themsPlves, and the Government of her Majesty are consequently bound to require that those Africans who were liberated ander British auspices shall not be subjected to the regulations in question." Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald was pleased to say of this despatch that it was -written in the bitterest words that ever came from Lord Russell's bitter pen. The words do not seem peculiarly bitter, or more severe than the occasion requires. An English Minister who had failed to remonstrate against the conduct of the Brazilian Government about the free Africans would have failed in his duty; and had the British public been earlier cognizant of the correspondence which has been proceeding about the free Africans, there would have been less toler- ance and indulgence for the Brazilian Government.
Lord Russell says in his despatch of Jane 6, 1863, which has been widely published, that "Her Majesty's Government are as far as ever from receiving the information repeatedly asked for,
and which their treaty engagements in favour of the liberated Africans justify them in demanding." And here at present the
correspondence ends. It is to be hoped that in a renewal of diplomatic relations with Brazil care will be taken to ensure freedom and good treatment for the free Africans who are under English protection. As to the past, if it cannot be said, in the strong language in which Lord Aberdeen, in 1845, described the conduct of the Brazilian Government as to the slave trade, that it has merited "an expression of national resentment," it must be admitted that the Brazilian proceedings during fifteen years as to these free Africans have abounded in what Lord Russell calls "subterfuges, evasions, and unfounded assertions."
As to the condition and treatment of slaves generally in Brazil we find little or nothing in the blue-books, and it may be inferred that there is no excess of cruelty. Cruelty, of course, is inseparable from slavery. We extract the following from a work written in. a most friendly spirit towards Brazil, "Brazil and the Brazilians," by two American missionaries, Kidder and Fletcher :—
" One department of the Casa da Correcao is appropriated to the flogging of slaves, who are sent thither to be chastised for disobe- dience or for common misdemeanours. They are received at any hour of the day or night, and are retained free of expense as long as their mastets choose to leave them. It would be remarkable if scenes of extreme cruelty did not sometimes occur here. ' The punishments of the House of Correction are not, however, the only chastisements which the refractory slave receives. There are private floggings ; and some of the most common expiations are the tin mask, the iron collar, and the log and chain. Those in the city are treated better than those on the plantations ; they seem more cheerful, more full of fun, and have greater opportunities for freeing themselves. But still there must be great cruelty in some cases, for suicides among slaves (which are almost unknown in our southern States) are of very frequent occurrence in Brazil."
This is only what is to be expected where the curse of slavery exists. Nor do we need proofs of the generally demoralizing effects of slavery on the nation. Three millions of slaves cannot exist in a nation, being three-sevenths of the whole population, without widely generating immorality. In domestic service they sap the morals of childhood and youth ; sexual immoralities are inevitably abundant between masters and slaves ; children remain slaves of fathers and brothers of brothers ; in the cities prostitution of female slaves is a common source of gain to masters and mistresses. These are the sad necessities of slavery, and these things exist in Brazil.
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