EMIGRATION TO BRAZIL.

RIO GRANDE DO SUL is one of twenty provinces of the immense Brazilian Empire, and the southernmost of all. Its climate is temperate, and it is in that respect best fitted of the whole of Brazil for European immigration. German colonisation

of this province began fifty years ago. Great troubles and suffer- ings beset the early colonists, but they have persevered against discouragements. The element of slavery in Rio Grande do Sul has been always weaker than in other parts of Brazil. The Ger- mans at last got a strong footing, and made themselves formidable ; their power became appreciated and their virtue felt, and the present prosperity of the German colonies of Rio Grande do Sul is vividly told in an interesting little volume* by the proprietor or editor, perhaps proprietor and editor, of an English newspaper published at Buenos Ayres, Mr. Mulball. In the summer of 1871 this gentleman took a trip to Rio Grande do Sul, and sur- veyed the German colonies there. When he got home he wrote this book, giving, we have no doubt, a fair, unexaggerated account of what he had seen. The province he represents as three times the size of England :—

" Its situation, between the twenty-ninth and thirty-fourth parallels of south latitude, gives it a finer and more temperate climate than any other part of the empire. Imagine to yourself, reader, a country nearly as large as Belgium or Holland cut out of these Brazilian forests, where the inhabitants are exclusively German, and speak no other language ; where chapels and schools meet you at every opening in the wood ; where the mountain-sides have boon in many cases cleared to make room for corn-fields ; where women travel alone through the forests in perfect security ; where agricultural and manufacturing industry flourish undisturbed ; where crime is unknown, and public instruction almost on a level with that of Prussia; in a word, where individual happiness and the welfare of the commonwealth go hand in hand, sur- rounded by the rich, tropical vegetation of Brazil, and favoured by the great advantages of a healthy climate, and the blessings of peace, order, and good government."

This is the triumph of German industry and perseverance, after fifty years, in a propitious climate. We take Mr. Mulhall's word, for he is evidently an honest writer, for what he has seen and knows ; but his general information about Brazil is derived from books, puffing and untrustworthy. It will be a great misfortune if

• Rio Grande do Si,! and its Getman Colonies. By Michael G. Mnlhall. London: Longman, Green, and Co. 1873.

this unpretending and honestly meant little volume made a diversion in favour of the schemes of Brazilian immigration which have lately exasperated the public mind of England. Such was far from Mr. Mulhall's intention ; such a result, we are sure, would grieve his respectable publishers. Mr. Mulhall's trip to Rio Grande do Sul was in the summer of 1871 ; in the end of 1869, a report of the English Consul at Rio, Mr. Lennon Hunt, points out that the German colonies of Rio Grande do Sul are an exception:—

" Numerous attempts have been made by the Government, at great expense, to found colonies of European immigrants, but none can be said to have proved successful, with the exception of one or two German colonies established in Rio Grande, at the southernmost extremity of the empire, where the climate is temperate. The difficulty with the northern provinces is that if the immigrants establish themselves on or near the coast-line, the climate will probally kill them sooner or later, should they devote themselves to agriculture ; and if they penetrate into the interior, to the table-lands, whore the climate is comparatively healthy, no roads exist for the transport of their produce to a market, and they find themselves isolated in a wilderness. While a work on Brazil, just published, speaks in glowing terms of the openings for British immigrants, and the social advancement that awaits them, a subscription is now in course of col- lection from the British residents, to enable a considerable number of their fellow-subjects of both sexes to return to their own country. Having been induced by the misrepresentations of interested persons to come here, they could find no profitable employment for their labour, and had returned to Rio de Janeiro. in a state of starvation, from the various colonies to which they had been sent. At this moment the United States' frigate Guerridre is being fitted out for the reception and conveyance back to the United States of as many emigrants from that country as can be provided for on board. The North-American citizen has not been more successful than the British subject in finding an opening for his industry here. There is a further consideration of some importance to a foreigner coming to this country, namely, the absence of any real security for human life."

Mr. Mulhall, with innocent intention, but ignorant and misled, writes that life and property are well protected throughout Brazil, and that while the Roman Catholic religion is the one established, " the utmost liberty and equality may be said to exist in this and all other matters affecting foreigners." This statement is certainly erroneous.

The emigration schemes now in operation are but a repro- duction on an enlarged scale of similar speculations of colonisa- tion from Germany, which involved thousands of Prussians in misery and ruin, and led, some ten years ago, the Prussian Government, which had that power over its subjects, to prohibit emigration for Brazil. In an authentic account of German emi- gration to Brazil published in 1863, in the Work of the Christian Church at Home and Abroad (Strahan and Co.), it was stated :- " As soon as the Brazilian planters began to experience a lack of slaves, they sought a supply of substitutes for the negroes from Europe, and by the aid of numerous unscrupulous agents, who baited their prey with the promise of a free passage and advances of money, they suc- ceeded in alluring some six to eight thousand Germans to the tropical parts of Brazil, where, by means of perfidious contracts, the attempt was made to reduce them to a state of perpetual bondage to the lord of the manor. Many of them soon succumbed to the effects of the climate and of ill-treatment, and a great number of the survivors are in a state of abject misery."

The same well-informed writer proceeded to point out the injuries to Protestant immigrants resulting from the non-recognition in Roman Catholic Brazil of Protestant and of mixed marriages :-

"Protestant and mixed marriages are still regarded as concubinage, and the children still treated as illegitimate, according to the strict sense of canonical law. This principle has been carried so far•, that the Bishops did not even express their disapprobation of several cases in which Catholic priests actually ignored a previous Protestant marriage. and against the will of the husband or the wife married the other party to a Roman Catholic The influence exercised by this state of things on the condition of Protestant worship in Brazil, as may be ima- gined, is very deplorable, and tends greatly to demoralise the Protestant settlers. Their so-called churches are mostly nothing but large sheds, and are totally devoid of steeples and bells, both being prohibited."

We may judge, then, the value of Mr. Mulhall's sweeping statement that the utmost liberty and equality exist in religious matters for foreigners. The British settler in Brazil has to con- front not only a foreign language, but also a religion which tramples on his Protestant marriage as null and void ; corrupt judges and foreigner-hating magistrates, from whom he cannot expect justice, and a general feeling of aversion to foreigners. The English officials, from different parts of Brazil, all tell the same story of anti-foreigner feeling. Mr. Consul Dunbar writes from Santos, province of San Paulo, April, 1872 :—

"I cannot say that I would, if asked, recommend any emigrant to come here, especially with countries like our own colonies to go to, because I regret to have to confess that I have no confidence whatever in the treatment the emigrant will meet with. As a rule, there seems to be an absurd jealousy with regard to foreigners, though there is no objection to make use of foreign labour and foreign capital."

Mr. Cobbold, Secretary of Legation, writes, January, 1870 :— "It may be inferred that at the present moment there is no opening whatever for the exercise of the skill and enterprise of foreign labour- ing classes with advantage to themselves ; added to a national feeling of jealousy of foreign interference. Slave labour may be said to put an effective bar to the labourer's procuring sufficient sustenance to support himself by honest labour in Brazil ; to be instanced by the fact that there are some fifty disappointed emigrants in the city of Rio at the present time, without the means of realising enough to support them- selves and their families."

The report of Mr. Phipps,* of March, 1872, on emigration to Brazil is a very valuable one, and such a report being in possession of the Government, it seems strange that they should have waited for further information from Brazil, before acting energetically on the heart-rending accounts of the misery of duped British emigrants which were lately brought pointedly to Lord Granville's notice by Lord Carnarvon. The Government should have circulated Mr. Phippa's report, with other already received confirmatory notices by Consuls, as widely as possible ; it should be sent to the clergy- man of every parish of the United Kingdom, and to every work- ing-man's library and institution in our land. Official warnings against emigration to Paraguay are prominently placed in every post office. 1Vhy is the same course not taken as to emigration to Brazil? Is the secret of the difference of treatment, that Para- guay is a puny republic and Brazil an empire, whose power of exciting the sympathy of foreign Governments and inspiring foreign newspapers is too well known to our Foreign Office ? Mr. Phipps points out "the reckless concession of immigration contracts before the localities have been prepared for the reception of the colonists ; the establishment of the colonies in positions so far inland that there has been no available market for the produce ; the delays in the construction of the promised roads and bridges necessary to keep up communications ; and the absence of any systematic legislation for the protection of the colonists." Mr. Phipps minutely and ably explains the disadvantage under which foreigners are placed in Brazil by its legislation as to colonies :—

" The law obviously places foreigners in a different position from natives, inasmuch as the latter are by Brazilian law not subject to im- prisonment for debt, and would seem to place colonists utterly at the mercy of their employers and of the local authorities. The foreigner, unaware of its provisions, who sets foot on Brazilian soil, finds him- self pretty much in the position of a slave, and liable to be treated as a convict, should his possible inability to work be distorted into un- willingness, or should the contract under which he is taken be unjustly carried out by his employer."

Mr. Phipps proceeds :-

" That under the present legislation existing in Brazil, British subjects can be encouraged to risk health and independence for• an inadequate remuneration, in a trying climate, among people of different ideas and habits from their own, when so many English-speaking countries are bidding highly for• their services, seems an impossibility. In Brazil the native population have a great jealousy and dislike to foreigners Indian raids, except on the extreme south-western frontier, thousands of miles away, are unknown, and any injustice to foreign settlers or colonists will be committed under the cover of legality,—as a result of the peculiar legislation in various respects in force against foreigners in Brazil, the notorious difficulty experienced by foreigners of obtaining even the justice they are entitled to from the local authorities, and the enormous distances to he traversed, which render it difficult for the consular authorities of their own countries properly to inquire into alleged grievances."

These words, coming from an English diplomatist at Rio, will be carefully measured. The writer's position with the Brazilian Court will be sensibly affected by his thus speaking disagreeable truth. This Secretary's report should not be permitted to be confined to Members of Parliament and Hansard's offices; it should be spread by Government authority as widely as possible through the country, to counteract suborned eulogies ; and it is worthy of being borne in mind that Mr. Mulhall's little book on Rio Grande do Sul, coming from publishers so eminent as Messrs. Longman, may unintentionally have the effect of making an unjust and mischievous diversion in favour of emigration to Brgzil. But, a few days ago, Lord Enfield, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, stated that the expected despatches 'from Brazil had been received, but he was not yet prepared to publish them. There should be no delay in this matter. It is to be hoped that an ex- cellent nobleman, who lately brought the question before the House of Lords, will extract from Lord Granville the whole truth.