A YEAR IN BRAZIL. 



Dr. Pedro Ferreira Vianna, in an article * on emancipation, 

 advises the employment of prudence and law. He says — 



" Slavery is an institution of our civil law. But there is also 

 in our civil code the law of November 7, 1831, which says, Article 

 I, 'All slaves which shall enter the territory or ports of Brazil, 

 coming from abroad are free ; ' and in Article 2, ' Persons who 

 knowingly buy as slaves those who are declared free in Article i , 

 are included under the term importers ; these importers, however, 

 are only compromised subsidiarily to the expenses of re-exporta- 

 tion, subject withal to the other penalties.' One of these penalties 

 is that of Article 179 of the criminal code, for those who reduce 

 free persons to slavery. . . . The nation is therefore compelled to 

 indemnify for those slaves who are liberated if they came before 

 that law, and to restore liberty to those who came after it. The 

 judges cannot, without injustice, fail to indemnify the masters. 

 Abraham Lincoln and the Americans had no such law as that of 

 183 1, and thus spoke in the name of God and of humanity. . . . 

 Fiat justicia pereat nee pereat mundus. I trust that in loyalty none 

 will say the law has fallen into disuse. . . . The law being known, 

 nothing is easier than to put it into execution. The Imperial 

 Government cannot and should not liberate by the Fund of 

 Emancipation the slaves- who are free in virtue of the law of 1831. 

 They know by the books, the invoices of sales, the baptismal 

 registers of the descendants of these Africans, and by other docu- 

 ments, who are those comprised under this head. . . . The civil 

 law states that there are hundreds of thousands of free men reduced 

 to slavery (about one-half of the population). . . . For these men 

 no indemnification can be allowed. The voice of the civil law 

 will not be smothered, because it will be heard in the recesses of 

 every conscience. ... In my words there is not only charity, but 

 the desire that you "should reconcile yourselves with God, with 

 humanity, with natural instinct, with civil law, with the slave ; and 

 this reconciliation means liberty.'' He then says that everywhere 

 there should be organizations to prevent freed slaves being con- 

 tinually threatened, prisons being invaded and captured slaves 

 assassinated, and finally to guarantee justice. He concludes by 

 extending the hand of friendship to all emancipators, and offers 

 * Gazeta da Tardc, June 30, 1884. 



