No. 70.
Mr. Hilliard to Mr. Evarts.
Rio de Janeiro, June 16, 1879. (Received July 28, 1879.)
Sir: I have in previous dispatches given an account of the discussion of the electoral reform bill in the Chamber of Deputies, and stated that the bill had been ordered to a second reading. All amendments offered by those who, while friendly to the government, opposed some features of that important measure, were voted down.
The bill, with the provisions originally contained in it as described in my previous dispatches, has passed the Chamber of Deputies by a large majority. It is now before the Senate, and it will undergo thorough discussion in that body. The conservative majority is so large in the Senate that the fate of the bill is regarded as doubtful. Still, as the measure is really conservative in its structure, and must be so in its influence, it may pass that body, notwithstanding the fact that it is brought forward by a liberal ministry. Baron de Cotegipe, a member of the late ministry, a man of great ability and a statesman of courage, is the leader “of the conservative party in the Senate. It is understood that the conservative senators recently met at the residence of Baron de Cotegipe to confer as to the proper course to be pursued in regard to the electoral reform bill.
I do not know that the report as to the result of the “caucus” is authentic, but it is stated that it is proposed by some of the leading conservative senators to meet the measure submitted to them by the liberal ministry in the boldest way; that is, to incorporate in it the amendment offered in the Chamber of Deputies by Mr. Saldanho Maromho making non-Catholics and naturalized Brazilians eligible to office. This would place the conservative leaders far in advance of the liberal ministry upon the most important political question in this empire. Compared with all other issues of the day, the question of the eligibilidade of non-Catholics and naturalized Brazilians to office is transcendently the greatest. It is impossible to ignore the elements of power that are inherent in the proposition that to-day, in the pressure of the great reforms effected by the civilization of the nineteenth century, all the barriers [Page 83] that exclude certain classes of the people from participation in the government of the empire because of their religious opinions, or the place of their nativity, should be removed in such a country as Brazil.
If, therefore, the leaders of the conservative party possess the requisite foresight and courage to adopt this great principle of modern free government, they will achieve a splendid triumph, and open their way to the seats of influence and power. Such an amendment adopted by the Senate would vindicate that body from the reproach that it blocks the way of progress in the empire of Brazil.
Nor would this course on the part of the conservatives be without a precedent to guide and to sanction it. But a few years since, the late Mr. Zacarias de Goes Vasconcellos, a great liberal leader, retired from the ministry upon some question affecting his dignity and touching his sensibilities, when Visconde do Bio Branco came into power and brought forward a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery, which became a law in September, 1871. This great measure, so beneficent, and so much in harmony with the advancing civilization of the world, was really a liberal idea, and ought to have been adopted by the statesmen who represented that party, but it was strenuously opposed by Mr. Zacarias de Goes Vasconcellos as inopportune, and the wise and statesmanlike policy of the premier, Yisconde do Rio Branco, prevailed.
Some years previous to this, the Emperor, a statesman of noble impulses and large views, had led the way to this important measure by emancipating his own slaves.
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I have, &c.,