September i, 1883,] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



iOt 



from Kio de Janeiro, by the wiuding Uoin Pedro II. 

 Railway, with its ecore of tunnels, or 200 miles farther 

 south, froiu LSantos, by the shorter but equally grand 

 mountain line of the Sao Paulo Railway, by which 

 incoming freight, human or material, is dragged up 

 tlie mountain side by wire ropes for five miles, rising 

 in this distance 2,o00ft., the rolling tableland is 

 reached, gradually sloping down to the head waters of 

 the mighty Rivers Parana and La Plata. Here it is 

 that the colonist is asked to come and live, and not 

 in the frizzling heat of the towns on the sea-shoie. 



Keputatioii is a great thing, so the northern parts 

 of the United States being better and more generally 

 known than the others, all have become credited with 

 being mild and temperate in climate, from Maine down 

 to Florida, or from Pennsylvania to Lower California. 

 Brazil, however, being but little known, and this little 

 being chiefly confined to her hottest parts, is, in like 

 manner, credited with having a climate like that of 

 the Guinea coast, whereas between Paril and Rio 

 Grande, a distance of 2,400 miles, the ciiversity of 

 climate is very great, only slightly inferior to that of 

 the States, and the interior being cut up by several 

 ridges of very high hills, almost any olimale may bo 

 found by going up or down these so-called hills. 



As a nation, though, Brazil is sick, and needs all 

 the gentle care her friends can give her. That slie 

 will recover no one doubts, that she will rise still more 

 vigorous than she now is iscertain,if shecan but get help, 

 moral and material, to beat down the monster anarchy 

 which will clutch her by the throat it her emancip- 

 ation of slavery be not very thoughtfully and prudently 

 carried out. 



SLAVERY IN BRAZIL: THE COMING 



CRISIS. 

 From the i?b N'ews, a paper which is honestly 

 and ably conducted by an American gentleman, we 

 have frequently quoted articles on slavery in the great 

 South American Kmpire, advocating immediate abol- 

 ition, and pointing to the case of the United States 

 as a warning and an example. "Be just and fear not," 

 is the principle of the policy advocated, the danger 

 of a catastrophe involving anarchy and- ruin lying not 

 in immediate action but in undue delay. The writer 

 forcibly used the argument that slave fathers and 

 mothers are not likely to endure bondage patiently, 

 when they see their children attaining freedom under 

 the law of manumission passed in 1871, and which 

 provided that all children born to slaves after that 

 date should be free under certain conditions of ap. 

 prenticeship, such as were not found to work well 

 in the West Indian Colonies of Britain. The abol- 

 itionist views of the Rio News were controverted by 

 an English resident in Brazil, who conjm-ed up many 

 lions in the path, and we believe we are not wrong 

 in attributing to the same gentleman the authorship 

 ot the very elaborate paper on the whole history, 

 condition and prospec's of the slavery question in 

 Brazil, which we quote from the Loudon Times of 

 July 27th. No one could more forcibly depict the 

 inquity of the whole system, from the original oper- 

 ations of the man-stealing traiEo to the deliberate 

 policy of keeping the slaves in Buoh abject ignorance, 

 that t'^Y always ask for Christ's blessing at the ha'ids 

 of tho?i: ,'bo have made property ot apd are making 

 profit by u.. y Hesh and blood. It is no new thing 

 in the history of the slavery controversy, that (he 

 brutalizing effects ot the eystera on the slaves should 

 be pleaded as au argument against emancipation until, 



at some indefinite time, the wretched bondsmen are 

 fitted for freedom. The writer in the Times foresees 

 and dreads the dangerous crisis which is rapidly ap- 

 proaching, and he predicts that slavery, instead 

 of existing up to the time fixed by law, 1910, will 

 come to an end even before the (Jose of this century, 

 of which only seventeen years have now to run. 

 Bat the tone adopted is most extraordinary. Instead 

 of recognizing that righteous law of retribution which 

 ever follows high-handed iniquity, and which appeared 

 in the shape of temporary ruin in the West Indies 

 and civil strife and bloodshed like water in the 

 United States ; instead of warning the slaveholders 

 that their only hope of escaping like consequences 

 lies in making the fullest atonement for their own 

 sins and those of their fathers, by restoring to 

 the slaves that freedom which no human being had 

 the right to deprive them of; instead of telling the 

 slaveholders that they must face the consequences of 

 wrong in the process of righting it; the writer directs 

 his shafts against the advocates of freedom, and tells 

 them that they must assume the responsibility of 

 any disastrous consequences, and that they are morally 

 bound to proviile ihe sum of- about seventy -seven 

 millions sterling required to pay the slaveholders 

 for the value of properly to which they never had 

 any moral right! The plea, as addressed to the 

 friends of freedom, is outrageously preposterous : as 

 much so as if it I'an : — "Don't deprive the poor thief 

 of the goods which lie has stolen, or which his an- 

 cestors stole and left to him, until you have paid him 

 their full value in the shape of compensation." 

 There is force in the plea, however, pvhen addressed 

 to such Englishmen (and we fear they are more 

 numerous than, for the credit of our country, wo 

 could wish) who have traded with money in Brazil 

 and whose security consists largely of slaves, — the 

 lands on wliich the slaves labour being worthless 

 without them, or their equivalent in free labour. In 

 the ranks of commerce and finance ai-e found too many 

 whose only maxim is " Make money " — " honestly, 

 if you can, " being left out. It was the interest of 

 such men — citizens of the Northern States — in Southern 

 slavery which really made the " peculiar institution" 

 die so hard, — being extinguished, finally, only in the 

 best blood of the nation, which was poured out like 

 water. Our mention of free labour reniinds us of 

 the fact, that the writer in TAe Times fails not only 

 to rest the responsibility of whatever const quonces ac- 

 crue on those who refuse to do justice to their slaves, 

 aud not on those who demand that justice in the 

 name of humanity and in the name of that Saviour 

 of humanity (which name the poor slaves are taught 

 to use so parrot-like), but that, as was to be expected 

 fro'n slaveholders, they are rendering the cultivation 

 of their est'itos by free labour impo.nsible, from their 

 tyrannical and cruel treatment of the free imiuigrants 

 who have consented to work on plantations. In the 

 Province of Ceard, where public opinion has led to 

 a good deal ot manumission, there was a cuBa recently 

 bi-tore the courts, instituted on behalf of some free 

 labourers, who when they were able to escape from 

 the plantation on which they really had boon held in 

 bondage, appeared as almost skeletons from starvation- 

 and covered only with filthy rags. It is only dire 

 necessity that would lead any freeman to adopt plant- 

 ation work, while slavery exists ; but many of the 

 slaveholders, by their conduct, are doing their best to 

 render the substitution of free for slave labour im 

 possible. There are good and wise and benevolent men 

 even amongst the slavholders, and for the sake of 

 such men, as well ns for the saUe of the slaves and 

 even for the sake of the cruel and bad slaveholders, we 

 cc^uld wish that the transition period in Brazil might 

 be peaceably passed over, without involving bloodshed 

 or ruin, But we must face the facts as they stand, 



