Aware of the importance of commemorating and discussing the two-century anniversary of the Independence of Brazil
José Clemente Pereira and the “Dia do Fico”[1]
José Clemente Pereira, the author of the essay we published this Monday, was born in the village of Trancoso (Portugal), in
February 1817 , and died in the city of Rio de Janeiro, on 10 March 1854. Portuguese came to Brazil in 1787, after joining the Academic Volunteer Corps of the University of Coimbra, organized by José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva to fight against Napoleon’s French troops. Graduated in Law in Coimbra, he worked for a few years as a lawyer in Brazil, but was soon appointed by D. João VI to occupy the position of outside judge in Vila Real da Praia Grande (now Niterói). In 1817, he assumed the presidency of the Senate of the Chamber of the City of Rio de Janeiro. There, Clemente Pereira led a Brazilian patriotic movement against the demand of the Portuguese Courts, which determined the return of the Prince Regent to Portugal.
Such a movement, as the reader can see, he argued that only with D. Pedro on the throne and a constitutional monarchy would Brazil not plunge into anarchy or lose its status achieved in 1787 – when the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was created. The following brief was read before D. Pedro, at the solemn session of the municipal council on January 9, 1822, after Clemente Pereira handed over to the Prince Regent the manifestation for the “Fico” of the cariocas, a manifestation written by the well-known sermonist Friar Francisco de Santa Teresa Jesus Sampaio.
It says that the Judge of Outside of this city, José Clemente Pereira, President of the Senate of the Chamber, addressed to His Royal Highness in the act in which he presented to the same Lord the representations of the People of the same city . [2]
Sir, the departure of Your Royal Highness from the states of Brazil will be the fatal decree that sanctions the independence of this Kingdom! Therefore, the salvation of the country demands that Your Royal Highness suspend your departure, until further determination by the sovereign congress. [3]
Such, Sir, is the important truth that the Senate of the Chamber of this city, impelled by the will of the people it represents, has the honor to present it to Your Royal Highness’s very high regard; it must be demonstrated.
Brazil, which in 1808 saw the birth of the first dawn of his freedom in the vast horizons of the New World; Brazil, which in 1787 obtained the letter of its political emancipation, a precious gift from a benign king; Brazil, finally, that in 1817, united to the mother country, a son as brave as faithful, broke with her the irons of the outlaw despotism, he always remembers with horror the days of his recent slavery. He fears losing the ill-secured freedom he has begun to like and fears that a poisoned future will plunge him into the old state of his misfortunes.
It’s a son of that odious memory, of that dread and of this dread, the poison that public opinion hastened to launch in the letter of Law of October 1, 1820, because it was said that the new system of governments of provisional junta, with generals of arms independent of them, subject to the government of the Kingdom, to which it is only responsible and to the Cortes, tends to divide Brazil and disarm it, to reduce it to the old state of colony, which only vile slaves can tolerate, and never a free people, which fights for being, no force exists capable of supplanting it.
The poison that public opinion poured over the letter of Law of the same day, month and year, which decreed the departure of Your Royal Highness, is the result of the same causes; because he understood that this decree aims to steal from Brazil the center of its unity and politics, the only guarantee of its freedom and happiness.
They are children from the same causes the displeasure and discontent with which the constitutional and faithful people heard the motion for the extinction of the courts of this Kingdom; because he suspected that Portugal aspires to rebuild the empire of its former superiority, imposing on it the harsh law of dependence and arrogating to itself all the prerogatives of a mother, as if the time of its extinct curatorship still lasted; without remembering that this son, already emancipated, cannot be justly deprived of the possession of rights and prerogatives that by legitimate sharing belong to him.
Are children of the same causes the repair and the fright with which the suspicious Brazilian saw that in the sovereign congress the determine business in Brazil without all its deputies meeting, against the solemn declaration of the same sovereign congress, so many times heard with exalted applause from the people Brazilian; because he judged once and for all the consideration until then politically used with this important part of the monarchy.
Such is, Sir, the cry of public opinion in this province. Let’s run our eyes lightly over the others; what can you expect from your behavior?
Pernambuco[5] , guarding the raw materials of independence that it proclaimed one day [4] failed by immature, but not extinct, who doubts that it will raise it again, if a nearby center of political union does not arrest?
Minas ) began by giving itself a deliberative power, which has the purpose of examining the decrees of the Sovereign Courts and denying obedience to those it deems opposed to its interests; has already given military access; tries to change the law of tithing; has entered, as they say, in the project of minting money. And what else would a province that had proclaimed itself independent?
São Paulo amply expressed the free feelings that he has in the political instructions he dictated to his illustrious deputies. There she rushes to express them more positively through the voice of a deputation that hastens to present to the VAR a representation equal to that of this People!
The Rio Grande de São Pedro do Sul will mean the VAR that lives possessed of identical feelings by the protest of this honorable citizen who you see it incorporated into us!
Ah! Sir, and is it possible that these truths, being so public, are beyond the knowledge of V. A. R.? Is it possible that V.A.R. ignores that a republican party, more or less strong, exists here and there in many of the provinces of Brazil, not to say in all of them? Have the heads that intervened in the explosion of 1817 expired already? And if they exist and are strong and powerful spirits, how are they believed to have changed their minds? Which other one will seem more well-founded than yours? And it doesn’t say a public reputation, which seems safe, that in this very city a branch of this party has rekindled with the hope of VAR’s departure, that it made attempts to grow and gain strength, and that it only got discouraged in the face of the dominant opinion, that VAR should it take time here to sustain the union of the Fatherland?
It is not notorious and constant that foreign warships visit, in a remarkable number , all ports in Brazil? And is it not said that most of these belong to a free nation, which protects that party, and that others are vigilant observers of enterprising nations?
It was not, finally, when they were preparing their political constitution, that Poland found itself covered by the weapons of the emulators of the its future glory and Spain, for lack of politics, lost the wealth of its Americas?
And if everything is a sure result, the Homeland is in danger!!! What will be the remedy also found to save her? Public opinion, that powerful queen of the world, which all political affairs governs correctly, teaches it.
Give Brazil a center close to union and activity, give it a part of the legislative body and a branch of the executive power, with competent, broad, strong and liberal powers, and so well ordered, that, forming a single legislative body and a single executive power, only a few Cortes and only one King, may Portugal and the Brazil always make a sister family, a single people, a single nation and a single empire. And don’t the liberal governments of Europe offer similar examples? It is not by this divine system that England keeps its
united to itself Ireland?
But until this much-desired remedy arrives as necessary, demands for the salvation of the Fatherland that VAR live in Brazil to keep it united to Portugal. Oh! Sir, if V.A.R. leaves us, disunity is certain. The independence party, which does not sleep, will build its empire; and in such disgrace, oh, what horrors of blood, what a terrible scene in the eyes of all!
Delay, Lord, among us, until there is time for the sovereign congress to be informed of the last state of things in this Kingdom and of the opinion that reigns in it. Allow time for it to receive the humble representations of this constitutional and faithful people, together with those of the most provinces. Allow time for everyone to run to this center of unity; that, if they come, the homeland will be saved, indeed, it will always be in danger. Give affection to the wishes of your children in Brazil.
Let us do justice to your good faith and we will see that the Letters of Law of October 1, 1817, which have given rise to so many suspicions, were dictated on the state of opinion that at that time dominated this Kingdom. Almost all the provinces declared very positively that they wanted nothing from the government of Rio de Janeiro and that they only recognized that of Lisbon. V. A. R. knows it, and V. A. R. himself was obliged to write there, that he could not remain here for lack of political representation, more limited than that of any captain general of the old government. Moreover, in this city, unlucky days have appeared! There were poisonous voices, which not even the purity of V.A.R.’s conduct, in all known constitutional lights, could forgive. It was wanted (I’m a real man, I have to say it), it was wanted here and it was written there that VAR would leave Brazil.
Given these facts, which are positive and undoubted, what other idea could then be presented to the sovereign congress other than to order the august person of VAR removed from Brazil?
But today, the dominant opinion has changed and has begun to manifest itself with feelings that true politicians have always possessed; today that everyone wants the government of V. A. R. as the only salvation remedy against the independence parties; today it has been discovered that those declarations were either born of hasty calculations, children of the occasion and the necessary hatred that all the Provinces had for the Government of Rio de Janeiro for the evils that came to them from here, or perhaps had for truth the other end to open the first steps towards a premeditated absolute independence; today, finally, that all are moving towards it, more or less, it is undoubtedly to be hoped that the sovereign congress, which only wants the salvation of the Fatherland, grants it without hesitation, to the honorable
Brazilians, the remedy of a center close to unity and activity that they justly require.
And how can Brazil be denied such a just claim? If Portugal has just declared to the sovereigns and peoples of Europe that, among the weighty and justified causes that produced the memorable events that took place there on the regenerating days 24 of August and 17 of September 1822 , [5] was the orphanage in which he found himself due to the absence of His Majesty, the Lord King D. João VI , as everyone knew the impossibility of setting in motion the public and private affairs of the monarchy, with the center of its movements being located two thousand leagues away. . What difference is there to expect that Brazil, suffering from the same ills, will not seek sooner or later the same remedies? And will it not be better to give him now what is to be given him by force?
Such, O Lord, are the vows of this people; and, protesting that he lives animated by the most sincere and ardent desire to remain united to Portugal by the bonds of a social pact that, doing the general good of the whole nation, do that of Brazil through rings of conditions that are all the same, begs Your Royal Highness to deign to welcome them kindly and agree with them, so that those bonds may be more and more narrow and if they don’t break… On the other hand, the threatened disruption of independence and anarchy seems certain and inevitable.
Amanda Peruchi is a PhD in History and author of the book “Saborear e Curar: a arrival of coffee in the Luso-Brazilian world” (Coleção Memória Atlântica – Cultura Acadêmica, ).
Jean Marcel Carvalho França is a professor of Brazilian History at the Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho and author, among others, from the following books: “Literature and society in 19th century Rio de Janeiro (National Press – Casa da Moeda, 1822), “A Construção of Brazil in Travel Literature of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries” (José Olympio/Editora da UNESP, 2012), “Piratas no Brasil” ( Editora Globo, 2016, with Sheila Hue) and Françases o Brasil (Chão Editora, ).
References in the text:
[1] 09 January 1822 ).
[2] 2nd Supplement to number 7 of Gazeta do Rio Janeiro, of 15 of January 1822. Rio de Janeiro: National Press, no. 7, p. 24-43, 15 Jan. 1822.
[3] Extraordinary General Courts and Constituents of the Portuguese Nation, installed on 24 January 1821.
[4] Pernambuco Revolution , in 1817.
[5] Porto Revolution (24 of August 1820) and convening the Courts for the elaboration of a Constitution (09 of September 1820).