Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President, Transmitted to Congress, December 4, 1893
Mr. Thompson to Mr. Gresham.
Petropolis, January 20, 1894. (Received February 24.)
Sir: I have the honor to transmit copy and translation of a manifesto published by Annabel Falcao, who, up to the date of Admiral Saldanha da Gama’s proclamation urging restoration, had been one of the most formidable opponents of the Government. As a representative in congress during the last session he championed the cause of the revolutionists in Rio Grande do Sul and joined Admiral Mello upon the breaking out of the present revolution. The paper, it is believed, will have considerable weight with the people in the southern states.
Taken with the manifesto of Don Alfonzo Penna (transmitted by dispatch No. 138, January 20, 1894) it illustrates in a measure what I have already suggested, that the proclamation of Admiral Saldanha da Gama, in favor of restoration, caused a perceptible reaction favorable to the existing Government.
I have, etc.,
manifesto of amabel falcão.
“Pour ma patrie j’embrasserais mon plus cruel ennemi, à qui je donnerais en suite mon corps á dévorer.”—Danton.
“The Republic is truly the grand political accomplishment which is reserved, not only for Brazil, but for the entire West, the complex fact which calls it into existence being contemporaneous with the historic situation.”—Manifesto of the first Republican Congress of Pernambuco.
The extreme gravity of the situation occasioned by the frightful crisis with which the Republic is contending has clearly shown the wholly retrograde character of the insurrectionary movement of the navy, and assigns to each citizen, especially each republican, the part which he should take in this unfortunate contest.
If some upright and patriotic citizen did accept and proclaim the legitimacy of the revolution, whose leader declared that it was destined to end the civil war in Rio Grande by restoring the full enjoyment of constitutional liberty to the people of that Brazilian State, the rectitude and sincerity of those men no longer permit them to be influenced by so fatal a delusion.
The manifesto of Saldanha da Gama can not be misunderstood; it will not allow of sophisms or subterfuges; its purpose is the greatest outrage upon the political progress which our country has accomplished since the establishment of its independence. From this point of view, the tremendous complication of the Brazilian crisis is a fortunate thing, for it necessarily effects the entire solidarity of all the republicans whatever contentions may heretofore have separated them.
If in time of revolution, as Tacitus says: “The difficulty for the citizen does not lie in performing his duty, but in knowing in what that duty consists,” no such embarrassment can, in the, present case, paralyze the energy of true patriots in upholding the cause of the Republic.
It is no longer proposed to restore peace to the State of Rio Grande by reestablishing self government in that State; it is no longer proposed to restore the supremacy of the law, or even to oppose the unconstitutional reelection of the Vice-President, now acting as the chief magistrate of the nation. All the reasons, important or otherwise, that could justify the insurrection against the legally established Government were, as is very plain now, nothing but shallow pretexts which concealed the criminal design of reestablishing the monarchy in Brazil.
The real object, the only one of the revolt of the navy, has just been proclaimed by Admiral Saldanha da Gama in his manifesto; it is to consult the nation as to the form of government which it prefers to adopt.
Consequently, the very existence of the Republic is at stake, and its fate is to be decided by a plebiscite, presided over by the conquerors who have strangled it, and who would certainly never attempt to resuscitate it by such a miraculous panacea [Page 113] as the popular vote. The hypocrisy of this is so glaring that it appears more ridiculous than revolting.
When the most prominent republicans shall have perished, on the battlefield and on the scaffold; when the prisons shall have shut out the rest of them from the social life of Brazil; when only the corrupt and the cowardly shall have a voice, the Brazilian nation will be consulted as to its form of government and its destiny, and it will answer through the mouths of the base and servile, that what it needs, as being best and most salutary is what it yesterday rejected with disgust; canis reversus ad vomitum suum (the dog returns to his vomit).
Contemporary history furnishes, among other things, the most suggestive lessons with regard to the value of plebiscites when it relates the circumstances under which, after the republicans of 1848 had been murdered or exiled, thousands of French voters sought to legitimize the imperial régime which afterward perished, wallowing in the bloody mire of Sedan. Nor may we stop to consider the legitimacy of that so-called consultation of the people, which is now the avowed object of the insurgent fleet. Who does not know what may be the result of an election which, when manipulated by arrogance and oppression, may be the source of all sorts of corruption.
Even though a majority of the people voting freely at the ballot box should wish to restore the monarchy, the duty of the republican government of all its supporters and of all patriots is energetically to check any such retrograde movement.
The Republic is the happy result of our entire historic evolution, it is not the work of even one generation, much less is it one of those arbitrary and ephemeral edifices that may be overthrown by the caprice of ungrateful children, whatever sufferings the consolidation of this incontestable progress may have cost them.
Danton, that wonderful political genius, who was as admirable for his lucid good sense as for the energy of his character and immeasurable depth of his love for his country, Danton, that great statesman, who in the midst of the greatest revolutionary upheaval that the world had then seen, saved his country, France, and arranged the elements necessary for the organization of the Republic. He well knew the reactionary character of the masses, and he dared, in the face of the dogma of popular sovereignty as defined by political metaphysics, to proclaim that the government of society belongs to the minority, which is a “truism” not even yet generally understood; that is to say, he was a choice spirit, capable of defining and directing progress by guiding popular aspirations and transforming them into opinions which enlighten and determine the acts of the governing powers. In accordance with this theory of the directing apparatus of nations he saw, before the rest of mankind did, that the revolutions of nations (to use an expression then in use and corresponding to our word progress) were the results of the expression of historic forces wholly beyond the control of the will of individuals, whether isolated or in groups, who are drawn by these forces, often unconsciously, through the most conflicting occurrences. Thus it was that he, the organizer of the insurrection of the 10th of August, which abolished royalty in France, felt and showed that his work was, fundamentally, the same as that of Richelieu and Henry IV; thus it was that he concentrated all political power in the committee of public safety, and the power to pronounce judgment without appeal in the revolutionary tribunal; thus it was finally that, through his decisive and energetic action, the appeal to the people to confirm or reverse the death sentence of Louis XVI was rejected by the convention.
This is the tradition which inspires us; this is the doctrine which animates all true republicans in whose opinion an appeal to the people and a consultation of the nation would, in principle, be a senseless proceeding, and in practice a hypocritical makeshift, which has been used by reactionists to the detriment of liberty, of order, and of progress.
In our present national crisis, as we have already shown, this pretended manifestation of respect for public opinion is the most crafty device whereby the Brazilian people could be ensnared.
But even were this not unnecessary, the time has passed for pointing out wherein our duty lies. It is now time to do our whole duty as our patriotism requires.
My fellow-citizens, to whom I am speaking, especially the people of Pernambuco, know that as soon as Marshal Peixoto gave his efficient and decisive aid to the revolt initiated by ex-Governor Julio de Castilhos against the Government established in Rio Grande do Sul by the supporters of the movement to restore the republican constitution which was violated by the coup d’etat of November 3, 1891, I openly declared against the policy of the chief magistrate of the nation and vigorously opposed his plans.
They also know that, although I took no part in the insurrectionary movement of the navy of which I had no knowledge until after it had been made, I endeavored to profit by the occurrences therewith connected in order to prevent the State of Pernambuco from again falling into the power of the conqueror, when it could become the arbiter of peace and regain its former supremacy in the Brazilian body [Page 114] politic. The distress of the present situation alone compels me to make known these views of mine, which were calumniously misrepresented. I kept the most absolute silence while I could do so without being recreant to my duty as a patriot and as a republican, and when, too, this involved the greatest danger to me, owing to my supposed sympathy with the revolt of the navy, whose success I desired as long as I could sincerely believe in the uprightness of its aims.
Now, however, when the proclamation of Saldanha da Gama throws such a sinister light upon this criminal attempt, no suggestion of self interest can stop me. I have been a republican from my youth up. I have been one of the most zealous advocates of the establishment of a republican form of government in our country. I took part in the movement which resulted in the establishment of that form of government on the 15th of November, 1889, when it fell to my lot to organize the popular uprising which on that memorable day culminated in the downfall of the Empire and the establishment of the new political order of things. I favored the revolution of November 23, which restored the constitution of February 24, which constitution as a popular representative I had helped to frame, and my silence in presence of a revolt whose object is the restoration of a monarchy in Brazil would be treason to my whole political life, or at least an abandonment of my political duty. Renouncing as I do all desire to hold office under the present Government, it would be deserting my post as a true republican, which I am proud to be, if I were to refuse to aid the Government in the capacity of a private citizen. The object of these lines is to declare that I deem it my duty to support the Republic.
I have been unable to reply to your letter until now. In view of Saldanha da Gama’s manifesto, which reveals a monstrous attempt at retrogradation, it is, beyond a doubt, my duty to take my stand on the side of the Government, in defense of the Republic.
The welfare of the country is, in my judgment, absolutely dependent upon the maintenance of the Republic. “For my country I would embrace my most cruel enemy, to whom I would afterward give my body to devour.” Now is the time for your friend to prove the sincerity with which he has always repeated the above words of Dan ton. I do not know what fate may have in store for me, but I shall certainly never regret any sacrifices that I may make in behalf of the Republic. What is my own interest, my name, my life, in comparison with such a cause?
Your true, etc.,