180 



TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



cities of Brazil was strictly confined to Portugal. 

 The daily increasing production of valuable colo- 

 nial articles, and the diligent working of the gold- 

 mines in the interior of the country, had greatly 

 augmented, during the last hundred years, the 

 riches and consequently the wants of the Brazilians; 

 the trade of Lisbon and Oporto therefore indem- 

 nified the mother country for the loss of the East 

 Indies, from which it derived the first sources of 

 its power and greatness. The intimate political 

 and mercantile union of those two cities with the 

 colony, was extremely favourable to the former, 

 and the more so, because its happy situation near 

 to the Mediterranean and the coasts of the ocean, 

 on the route of universal commerce between Europe 

 and the East and West Indies, made it more easy 

 to dispose of colonial produce. The Portuguese 

 merchants at that time, not only fixed at pleasure 

 the prices of all the productions of Brazil, which 

 was obliged to sell exclusively to them, but could 

 likewise make their payments in European mer- 

 chandise, and upon conditions prescribed by them- 

 selves. Thus Lisbon, at the close of the last cen- 

 tury, had attained a degree of activity and wealth, 

 which made it next to London, the first commercial 

 city in the world. But after a royal decree* had 

 founded the independence of the Brazilian com- 



* The Carta Regia, by which free trade in the Brazilian 

 ports was laid open to foreigners, is of the 18th of February, 

 1808. 



