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 



