568 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



of Spain, into a number of disjointed states, arose out of the measure which 

 gave to this important part of the Portuguese Dominions privileges and 

 honours similar to those enjoyed by the mother country. The period 

 for assuming this new distinction, under the title of the United King- 

 dom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarva, was judiciously fixed for the 

 anniversary of the Queen's birth-day, in December, 1815. All were 

 pleased with the circumstance, and though the projectors evidently saw 

 little more in it than a change of title, the people felt that they entered 

 upon a new era of their political existence, appeared to think them- 

 selves elevated to a higher rank in the scale of human beings, beheld 

 an irrefragable proof that their destiny was fixed, — that Brazil would, 

 in future, be considered as one of the nations of the world, and be 

 no longer sacrificed to the interests of any other state. The event 

 infused into the public mind a sense of independence, a proper con- 

 sciousness of its own importance, and a determination to support the 

 new dignity. 



Yet in order fully to understand the extent and importance of this 

 national feeling, it will be necessary to recollect that, in old times, the 

 Provinces were almost wholly unconnected with each other, — that they 

 had scarcely any stronger common bond than the similarity of language, 

 the circumstance of receiving their respective triennial governors from 

 the same Court, and the commercial one, which led their views and their 

 interests to the same European city ; — that, between some of these 

 provinces there existed an opposition of interests, and between others 

 open and avowed jealousies. Hence it was that when the Court arrived 

 in Rio, the Colonies were found to consist of portions so disjointed as 

 to be ready, on the slightest agitation, to fall in pieces, and render the 

 situation of the Royal emigrants very precarious. There were required all 

 the address of Government, and all the powerful support which it received 

 from Britain, to preserve the administration from positive disrespect, — to 

 keep the whole of Brazil within one common bond, — to turn the people's 

 attention from Lisbon to Rio, — to make them feel that the latter city had 

 become the centre of their union, the Capital of their widely diffused 



