No. 21.
Mr. Trail
to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Rio de Janeiro, June 27, 1884. (Received July 19.)
Sir: One of the causes of the downfall of the late ministry of Seiilior Lafayette was his expressed determination to carry into effect the law of June 28, 1870. This law orders that the realty of the monastic orders shall be sold and the proceeds invested in national stock. It guarantees to the orders the interest accruing on said investment during the lifetime of the members, and concludes by stating that the conversion is to take place within ten years.
Over thirty years ago a law was passed prohibiting the creation of any new monastic orders, and forbidding any of the then existing orders to take in any new members after that date. All the realty held in mortmain by the said orders would, on the death of the last member of each order respectively, revert to the state.
At the present time many of the orders are reduced to four, three, and even one surviving member. It is the intention of the Government to provide for the surviving members during the remainder of their lifetime by paying them yearly a sum of money equal to the yearly income the property taken from them ought to yield at a fair valuation.
Those orders having schools or hospitals in connection with their monasteries are exempt from the operation of the law.
Many of the orders have maladministered their property, in some instances squandering their funds in dissipation. Valuable city property come to them by legacy has been allowed to go to ruin by neglect, rendering the general improvement of the city in the vicinity of such property impossible.
The orders doing good, those having schools and hospitals, are to be left undisturbed, while the other class is to be deprived of the further control of its property.
In December last the late ministry appointed a commission to convert the said property. The first step taken by the commission was to order persons renting houses from the orders to pay the rent which would fall due at the end of the year to the agents of the commission. The tenants then found themselves threatened with eviction on default of payment both to the agents of the commission and to the agents of the religious orders. At this point the matter was brought before the proper court, and a decision was rendered declaring the acts of the commission illegal. Pending the decision the tenants paid their rent into the national treasury, to be subject to the order of the court. Prom the treasury it was immediately taken by the commission, the minister of that department giving up the money on the order of the minister of the Empire. The commission is now engaged in quietly making an inventory of the realty of the orders in the Empire.
The religious orders and their friends object to the execution of the law now, more than thirteen years after the passage of the law, and especially to the acts of the commission, proceeding as it has in defiance of the decision of the court. A commission with extrajudicial powers in a time of perfect peace, they claim, is an institution in violation of the constitution of Brazil. When the information reached Rome of the appointment of a commission to carry out the act of 1870, His Holiness the Pope promptly sent his protest against what he was pleased to consider as the spoliation of the church.
[Page 32]Without undertaking to give the reply of the Government, it may be safely stated, I think, that the weight of public opinion is on the side of the Government in this matter of the conversion of the monastic realty.
The new minister of the Empire being interpellated, very recently, on this subject, replied that it was the intention of the Government to carry out the law of 1870, and that the measures adopted by the previous ministry to that end were fully approved.
I have, &c.,