BEAZIL— GENERAL SURVÎNT. 83 



only under the pressure of the British Government. Nor was the convention 

 observed, and the traffic continued, despite the English cruisers, and despite the 

 " Aberdeen Act " of 184ô, claiming the right of pursuing and capturing slavers 

 in the Brazilian harbours. From 50,000 to 80,000 continued to be annually 

 smuggled in down to the middle of the century, and as many as 1,500,000 are 

 estimated to have been imported between 1826 and 1851, when the Brazilian 

 Government was compelled by public opinion to place the slave trade on the same 

 level as piracy. In 1851 the servile population was estimated at 2,200,000, but 

 owing to the excessive mortality of the blacks, and the cessation of the import 

 trade, they had fallen to 1,500,000 in 1871. 



Public opinion still continued to demand the abolition of slavery itself. In 

 1866 the Benedictine monasteries liberated their 1,600 blacks, and the good 

 example was followed by the hospitals and other institutions. At last in 

 1871 was passed the law of progressive emancipation, which aimed at the 

 total extinction of slavery in a single generation. The same law summarily 

 liberated all the slaves of the State, of the Crown, and of intestate estates, 

 and this was followed by the final abolition of slaveiy in 1888, the very year 

 in which Brazil effected an almost bloodless political revolution, changing the 

 form of government from an empire to a federal republic. The emancipation 

 affected 740,000 blacks, so that in twenty years their number had been i-educed 

 by one-half. 



But if servitude has disappeared, the system of large landed estates per- 

 sists. This is at present the chief factor in the social life of Brazil ; it has 

 given an immense impulse to free immigration and to the importation of hired 

 labourers. 



Brazil and the United States. 



In many respects Brazil, the " South American Union," may be compared with 

 the North American Union. In their geographical aspect both regions present 

 a curious resemblance, each occupying the central parts of symmetrical continents 

 watered by river systems of prodigious extent. The relief also is much the same, 

 somewhat narrow parallel coast ranges on the east side, traversed or flanked on 

 the west by the great backbone of the New World. 



Even their history presents striking analogies, despite the difference of origin 

 Latin on one side, Anglo-Saxon on the other, and despite the slighter indus- 

 trial and intellectual development of Brazil. In both regions the whites found 

 themselves originally face to face with the aborigines, who were relentlessly 

 pressed farther and farther inland. In both slave labour was imported to clear 

 the ground and work the plantations, and in both has been developed an aristocracy 

 of planters, whose power rests on the exploitation, almost on the monopoly of a 

 small number of agricultural products. 



The two great Powers of North and South have also had their frontier wars, 

 the United States with Mexico, Brazil with the southern neighbours, and in 1893 

 the latter was still wrangling diplomatically over boundary questions. 



