fear from the climate. Are slaves employed only under the equator? Are they not employed in agriculture ? We have seen that Rio alone contains more than 100,000.

It is hoped to people an uninhabited country by slavery. Everywhere the negro population dies out by degrees in slavery. It is a law of Providence, and this law extends to certain animals, that perpetuation is impossible in captivity.

An overwhelming subversion is feared. If, as is affirmed, the negroes are well treated, if precautions are taken to bind them to the soil by engagements, and also by the threefold bond of property by not disputing to them their cabin and garden, of family by encouraging marriage, of religion by favoring their taste for instruction and religious worship, there is no cause for fear. The example of the French and English colonies proves that the negro race is gentle, domestic, and susceptible of civilization. It flees the plantations only where the memory of a harsh slavery inspires it with dread; only when the transition is not prudently managed.

It is hoped that the influx of European colonists will one day render slavery useless. The day is far off when Brazil will have received 10,000,000 inhabitants by this means. But colonists are little attracted towards slave countries ; do not the Northern United States receive more than the Southern? The colonists who come, moreover, make the greatest possible haste to buy slaves in their turn. The French and English themselves, who would blush in their own country to declare themselves partisans of slavery, despite the threat of losing their nationality, do not scruple to own slaves in Brazil. The influx of colonists will, therefore, increase the demand for slaves, unless the abolition of slavery precede their arrival.

We will again invoke here the example of North America. The States which had the courage to abolish slavery

when it was of small extent, weathered the momentary crisis without trouble, and are now the most flourishing States of the Union. Where the imprudent insensibility of the legislators suffered the evil to increase, the people know no longer how to uproot it. Let Brazil take warning by the example of the Southern States.

The power being concentrated, the emancipation does not present the difficulties in Brazil which are encountered by the Congress of the United States. Indemnity is not a burden impossible to be borne in a country whose finances and credit are prosperous. It may be satisfied in part by a few years' postponement. Above all, it will be greatly diminished by making literal application, as may rightfully be done, of the statutes and treaties which declare all slaves free who are brought thither by the slave-trade. Should a strict scrutiny be made of the manner in which the slaves came into the hands of their masters, how many would remain whose possession could be justified?

In short, the origin of slavery in Brazil is infamous. Its maintenance is without excuse. Its abolition presents no political difficulty.

Its effects would be a financial burden, an agricultural and commercial crisis, temporary and easily repaired, the gravity of which each day of delay increases, far from bringing the solution.

If the suppression of slavery be a blow dealt to wealth, its continuance is an increasing obstacle to morality; between these two elements of a people, it is necessary to choose, or rather to know that a people without virtue becomes erelong a people without wealth.

It is useless to say that slavery is mild in Brazil; whoever has seen the drunken, gambling, thieving, and licéntious negroes at Rio, whoever has visited the Caza de Correcão, whoever has penetrated to the Southern estancias, knows what is to be thought of the morality and

happiness of the blacks. But to speak only of the whites, they are themselves the victims of slavery. It produces there what it produces elsewhere, the corruption of the family, the corruption of justice, and the corruption of religion; and when these three sacred things are debased, what remains? I do not pretend that the little communities in the rest of South America are, alas! more virtuous or more upright than Brazilian society. It is, on the contrary, because the latter holds the first rank, because the future of this country is destined, as I believe, to a marked place in history, that I blush to find on its brow a spot which it alone bears on this magnificent yet unhappy continent. To serve God and own slaves, to render justice and own slaves, to be a husband and father and own slaves, - this is what a Christian European of the nineteenth century can no longer comprehend; this is what is witnessed in Brazil.

Happily, a generous movement in ideas, a practical movement in facts, permit us to conceive hopes of better things. Great efforts for European colonization, after a few checks, have fully succeeded. The colony of St. Leopold at Rio Grande do Sul, founded by the government in 1825, has now more than 12,000 inhabitants. Since 1845, the Emperor has founded, a few leagues from Rio, the town of Petropolis, which already has more than 5,000 residents. Private individuals have established centres where colonists live satisfied and in the enjoyment of abundance, cultivating the land on shares or buying on credit. Lastly, the statute of Sept. 18, 1850, which creates a veritable register of lands, separates the public from the private property, and authorizes the government to institute a general management of the public lands, by clearing away from its path all the legal

* Especially Prince de Joinville, on the estates of his wife, the Princess Francisca. See the excellent chapter of M. Reybaud, Brésil, Chap. V. p. 198, and the Report of M. Aubé, Revue coloniale, 1847, II. p. 332.

difficulties arising from ancient grants or sesmarias, opens a vast future to colonization. On the other hand, a society, as we have seen, was formed in 1853 both for colonization and against the slave-trade. In 1856 the English Ambassador, Mr. Scarlet,* wrote to Lord Clarendon that the Minister, Mr. Paranhos, had told him that the resolution had been taken by the government gradually to abolish slavery in Brazil, and that he himself was a member of a society called Ypiranga, formed in memory of the independence of Brazil, under the protection of the Emperor, which every year solemnly emancipated slaves in open church before the Emperor and Empress.

This generous movement will grow, let us hope it. Let Brazil leave foolish fears and paltry arguments to petty colonies, where there are so few masters, so few workmen, so little capital, and so few products, that a storm, a blight of vegetation, a bankruptcy, or a change in government, plunges them long into suffering. But a great monarchy of 8,000,000 inhabitants, intelligent, united, and vigorous, should conceive and accomplish the designs commanded by humanity; and it would be glorious if the Latins of South America, boldly abolishing slavery, should have the honor of setting the example to the Saxons of North America.

* Correspondence with British and Foreign Ministers and Agents relative to the Slave-Trade, 1857, Class B, No. 182, p. 171.

BOOK FIFTH.

COLONIES OF HOLLAND.*

I. THE DUTCH EAST INDIES.

THE Dutch, small in territory, but great in history and character, are among the peoples of Europe that do most honor to the human species. They have wrested their soil from the waves of the ocean, and freed it from foreign dominion. Skilled in navigation, long surnamed the wagoners of the sea, daring, ready to go at all times to the ends of the world for wealth or for battle, they have possessed the art, without shedding as much blood as the Spaniards in America or the English in India, by degrees to extend and establish their empire on the vast, fertile, and populous islands of Malasia.†

There, under the authority of the Governor-General, a veritable king, supported by a small army, composed in part of natives, and surrounded by a few thousand inhabitants, twenty million inhabitants form an empire vaster

* Immediately following the publication of this volume, emancipation throughout the Dutch Colonies was proclaimed by a law bearing date August 8, 1862, to take effect July 1, 1863. M. Cochin's analysis of this law, in the Journal des Débats, Sept. 20, 1862, will be found in the "Results of Emancipation," p. 396. - TR.

† Histoire des établissements hollandais en Asie, by Capt. Dubouzet, Revue coloniale, 1843, p. 137. The last treaty, which guaranteed their possessions to the Dutch, was concluded with England, March 17, 1824.