292 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
censorship of the press ; there is no constraint upon the 
exercise of any man's religion ; nominally, there is abso- 
lute freedom of thought and belief. But in the practical 
working of the laws there is a very arbitrary element, and a 
petty tyranny of the police against which there seems to be 
no appeal. There is, in short, an utter want of harmony 
between the institutions and the actual condition of the 
people. May it not be, that a borrowed constitution, in 
no way the growth of the soil, is, after all, like an ill- 
fitting garment, not made for the wearer, and hanging 
loosely upon him ? There can be no organic relation be- 
tween a truly liberal form of government and a people for 
whom, taking them as a whole, little or no education is 
provided, whose religion is administered by a corrupt clergy, 
and who, whether white or black, are brought up under 
the influence of slavery. Liberty will not abide in the 
laws alone ; it must have its life in the desire of the 
nation, its strength in her resolve to have and to hold it. 
Another feature which makes a painful impression on the 
stranger is the enfeebled character of the population. I 
have spoken of this before, but in the northern provinces 
it is more evident than farther south. It is not merely 
that the children are of every hue ; the variety of color 
in every society where slavery prevails tells the same story 
of amalgamation of race ; but here this mixture of races 
seems to have had a much more unfavorable influence on 
the physical development than in the United States. It 
is as if all clearness of type had been blurred, and the re- 
sult is a vague compound lacking character and expres- 
sion. This hybrid class, although more marked here be- 
cause the Indian element is added, is very numerous in 
all the cities and on the large plantations ; perhaps the 
