THE LAST EEVOLUTION IN RIO

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1869, 10 February 1892, Page 6

THE LAST EEVOLUTION IN RIO

[By Phillip Mbnnbll.]

London, December 26. One of the attractions which the homeward route of the New Zealand Shipping Company, via Cape Horn, offers to the exigeant globe-trotter is the novelty of the few hours' " look in " at Rio de Janiero. This luxury, like most others, has ite drawback, whioh in this case takes the shi\pe of a great risk of being embargoed further on at Teneriffe, where, however, only five days away from England, there is not the st>me longing to go ashore, and not so much to fee when one does so. The Brazilian capital hai a more fatal gift than the " beauty " o! ita harbor, viz., its liability to yellow fever, whioh makes arrivals from Rio objects of alarm to the Spanish authorities at Teneriffe, who have to guard the repute of their island as a health resort. This would be shattered for ever if yellow fever were allowed to creep in, so that visitors from Rio must not be surprised if on slight plea they are rigorously kept out of Teneriffe. For the rest, the "look in" at Rio occasionally involves unrehearsed experiences not exactly "in the Bill." This was the case on the last homeward trip of the Kaikoura. As soon after daybreak on 24th November that Btately vessel waß slowly steaming up the bay, beneath headlands and between islets, into the inner harborage, nothing in the calm aspect of Nature intimated that anything in the shape of a social convulsion had occurred the day previously. Such, however, was the fact. Our passengen — at any rate, the veteran voyagers amongst them — were disputing as to the respective superiorities of the Sydney and Rio harbors, when, with a superabundance of gold lace and a superfluity, as it seemed to me, of bowing and scraping, some halfdozen Brazilian officials stepped on board, and, after inspecting the ship's papers, gave us the " open sesame," going over the side again with the same amount of swagger and palaver as they had displayed on coming aboard.

All this evoked the usual manifestations of supercilious contempt for the " parleyvoos," which is the birthright of every British tar, from the cabin boy to the captain. The agent then came aboard and told our skipper, with the most unconcerned air possible, that they had had "another revolution" in Rio the day before. "Another revolution," just as if they were everyday occurrences, like shrimps at Margate or fogs in London. On hearing the agent's " word," every passenger, as by a common intuition, turned an awestruck glance towards the now approximate city, evidently expecting to gaze on a

horrid medley of ruined buildings, burning houses, barricaded streets, piled up bodies, gutters running blood, and in a word all the paraphernalia of a true right-down South American revolution of the good old, or rather new, sort. To the disappointment (as it must be confessed) of every Christian soul on board, not a single orthodox sign of anything after the Argentine, Chilian, or Feruvian model was visible. A motley, many-colored throng swarmed upon the water's margin, but they were not " millingtary," but simply the market sellers and their customers, male and female, with visages as vari-hued as their garb. Farther away in the background the chimneyless houses loomed up peacefully and intact; whilst from the turrets of neighboring churches there pealed forth not the war-summoning clarion, but the voice of the matter-of-fact timepiece telling the hour of day. The only alert objects in the vicinage were two or three war steamers, which, with steam up and anchors lifted, seemed ready for anything. Their ver-

million funnels were the only emblems

of carnage or guilty shame en evidence. And for once appearances were not mendacious, for the day previous, as we learnt later on, one of them had turned his guns against the capital and fired a few shots " promiscuous like " into the heart of the city. Fortunately no one was hit in that heart, or any other, and only a small fragment was chipped off one of the small towers of the Candelaria Church. But it would be a mistake to suppose that nothing was accomplished because nobody was murdered and no great pile of costly buildings toppled down. The shots, few as they were, were the death knell of the despotism of President Deodoro, who on the 4th of November previously had forcibly dissolved the Congress, and who now himself fell without a struggle, his imitation of Cromwellian methods doing nothing for him beyond hastening the d6ch6cmce of his power. Fonseca we English usually call the usurper ; but at Eio he is familiarly styled by his Christian name of Deodoro — not, bythe - bye, in accordance with any prescriptive custom of address, but simply by the same sort of popular whim which makes people call Lord Randolph Churchill "Randy," when nobody would ever think of styling Lord Salisbury " Robert," or, more sacrilegious still, "Bobby." The facts of the case — to use the orthodox formula — appear to be briefly as follows: — Deodoro, whilst trying to govern without a Parliament, was audacious enough to think he might govern in spite of his colleagues, and so quarrelled with the Minister of Marine, Admiral Wanderkolk, even going so far as to order his arrest. The news reached the navy, who, after a scuffle with some dissentients within their own borders, deputed one of their ships to evince, in as forcible a manner as was possible, the common feeling as to Deodoro's maltreatment of their chief. This was done in the effective way already described, with the result that the displacer of Don Pedro, the doughty Deodoro, at once resigned his waning powers into the hands of the Vice-President, General Peixoto, who only holds them, as I understand, in trust for or until the illegally disolved and dispersed Parliament cares to make a permanent choice of a fresh State head.

When we got on shore we found that the indifference of the agent was quite indicative of the attitude of the populace, at least as we observed that attitude nearly four-and-twenty hours after the shot struck the cathedral with its menacing message for the ex-President. We found out, however, that the day before there had not been quite the same stolidity. Even that boast of Rioits trams — had ceased to run ; the muledrivers, followed by their brothers in labor — the carriers — having incontinently rushed off into the mountains at the sound' of the first gun. The shops were also, we were told, all shut—" business being suspended," after the fashion of- an English town on a general holiday. No further mischief ensuing, the drivers and carriers had returned to their posts, and the shops were all open when the Kaikoura's passengers arrived to delight the citizens by all those displays of obdurate "new chumship" in which the Britisher abroad exuberates just in proportion as he arouses the amusement and

irritation of the "natives," whom he despises with an undiscriminating universality which is hugely captivating. In a monetary sense, the change of Government had produced what "In the city " is called " a better feeling," though for the moment this wae hardly indicated by the rates of exchange, which was a shade stiffer, the unfortunate milreis, which used to be worth 2b 3£d, and had by the same token been as low as 10q., falling from Is to lid and a fraction, which latter varied with the liberality of the money changer, or perhaps with his appreciation of the verdancy or otherwise of his visitors. One very soon learns in Bio that what is called premium

on gold really means the discount on silver, the purohaaing power of the former being stationary, whilst that of the silver has gone down. There are some curious exceptions and anomalies in the peouniary arena under these conditions. The pay of a workman was two and a-half milreis per diem under the old regime, and under the new, with the reduced purchasing power of the nickel and silver coinage in which they are paid, the wages are the same. No wonder, then, that distress prevails, and that two of the leading speculators of the city were paying " ransom " (in Mr Chamberlain's sense) for the immunity of their riches in the shape of daily doles to the hourly increasing contingent of the starving poor..

No wonder, too, that some faint suggestions of a "restoration" were in the air, and that "le Pauvre Empereur" were words whispered abont as in the days when the disgrace of Sedan was beginning to be less keenly felt in a France not yet fully educated up to the Republic. I had some talk with the, I presume, French-American editor of the English paper, the ' Rio News,' M. Lamoureux. I found him in the thick of getting out his little " weekly," with a full, true, and particular account of the " glorious " and bloodless revolution of the day before. He was courteous enough not to kick me down stairs, and, indeed, showed few signs of being restive under the inflictions of my inopportune call. But I knew what he must feel, and I was not inhuman enough to prevent him availing himself to the full of the unaccustomed liberty, which the abolition of the Press censorship, along with all the paraphernalia of martial law, which Deodoro had set up, had secured for him through those blessed cannon shots. M. Lamoureux kindly passed me on to the editor of " the " leading journal of the city, as he magnanimously called it, this being the first time in my experience in which 1 ever heard an editor so style the rival organ. Think of such a thing in New Zealand ! But they manage these things better in Rio, us 1 am bound to say they do their revolutions as compared with others of which one wots. I found the rival editor worthy of his confreres' recommendations. He is a man in the prime of life, a polyglot linguist, and appeared to possess an equal amount of mental and physical vigor. I could swear he would be as incisive with the sword as he is admittedly trenchant with the pen. He was quite the hero of the occasion, having escaped arrest at the hands of the Deodoro party by a mere fluke the previous Sunday — and now it was Tuesday, and his enemy was, metaphorically speaking, biting the dust. Of course he thought that this change was one for the better, and he thought the people thought so too. There was evidence of this in the fact that Rio Grande, which had held aloof from the first revolution and its subsequent outcomes, had now formally given its adhesion to the new order of things. Then, too, the financial tone was better (though the rate of exchange did not yet show this), the publication of the names of the new Cabinet had bad a good effect, the selection for Finance Minister being especially reassuring. This gentleman, he explained to me, had been chairman of the Parliamentary Committee which had reported against the President's scheme for increasing the paper currency. Despite this, the ' Gazette ' was actually in type decreeing the new departure, and would have been out ere then but for those lucky gunshots. He thought that foreign confidence would be increased when it was realised, as it promptly would be in business circles in London, what the new Finance Minister's appointment meant. I asked him as to President Peixoto, whom I had heard stigmatised as a traitor because of his alleged betrayal of Don Pedro, under whom he had held high military position up to the last. My " able editor " thought that he was not to blame in the matter, and that his own statement must be accepted that he had not known of the projected deposition of the Emperor until the very morning of its accomplishment, too late to interfere or to run his head against the stone .wall of the fait accompli. In reply to a further query, be did not think there was any feeling in favor of a retoration. The Emperor's state of health previous to his deportation had placed him under the control of his medical attendant, and the people resented being ruled by the Imperial physician. Many would have taken up arms on his behalf, but the coup d'etat came on them by surprise, and they found to their amazement that the dynasty had made no provision for its own protection in a military sense. People in Europe must not think that the party of law and order were indifferent. They were watching events, and would step in when they saw a chance of constituting a really stable Government. In the meantime neither the State nor its creditors were in any danger. I was much struck with this specimen of the " able editor," as he flourishes at Rio, and who, as if he had not enough to do with the direction of his own paper, was being pestered by a host of Kio correspondents of up-country journals, who seemed to hang on his words, and then rushed away in the red heat of gesticulatory effervescence to transmit his inspirations to their rural mouthpieces. I could not stand any longer between these gentlemen and their source of knowledge, so amidst the grateful bows and looks of several of them, whom I had kept waiting, I felt unconscionably, I followed the example of the earlier arrivals, who had kept me waiting, and left for the telegraph office, where there were the only symptoms of excitement I had seen since landing. The fiscal (Government censor of telegrams) had been withdrawn from the office, and the boys were boasting how they had aided the happy inBpiration of the new Government by kicking the unfortunate functionary downstairs. I stood dumfonnded at this act of energy in somniferous Rio, and was not surprised to learn later that the boys considerably exaggerated their own agility and the celerity of the fiscal's descent. That the allowance of Peixoto's succession was onjy interim sound to be borne out by the fact that he was a military man, whereas the revolution is regarded as establishing the supremacy of the navy, which, from what I gathered, is more popular that the army. A good proportion of the latter, which only cumbers 14,000, made common cause with the navy, and the balance assumed a watching attitude, which is perhaps partially accounted for by the fact above mentioned— that the new, like the old, President is a military man.

I don't know whether your readers have had an opportunity of perusing the manifesto put forth by Deodoro on the 4th November, when he finally crossed the Rubicon between a constitutional and a despotic presidency by dissolving the Congress and decreeing martial law. It is full of fine phrases, such as " love for the grandeur of liberty and respect for the majesty of right," an emotion so beautifully illustrated by the coup d'etat of which the document is intended to be the vindication, The army and navy are spoken of as the " high depositories of the national will " ; but to the outside observer there appears to be no "national will" in existence, the weakness of the revolution being that, lih°, federation in Australia, it did not emanotp from the rank and file, but from a clique of officers who marched considerably ahead of popular impulse. What is wanted now is for the people to catch up to the movement and shape it according to their own ideas, as they have refrained distinctly from doing up to date. The sublime air of injured innocence with which Deodoro refuted the "calumny" that he meant

to transform the constitutional presidency into a despotic dictatorship (as he was in the act of doing) is unparalleled in the annals even of political Peoksniffianism, "An utter mistake," he called it, evidently more in sorrow than anger, "an utter mistake, an error and injustice of mankind in passing judgment upon the victim chosen by Fate or by Providence for the realisation of a work of grandeur and sacrifice." But the main point about the document is the glorious, some might think it, the unblushing candor with which the ex-President assails the impertinence of the Congress in tacking on to its legislative functions the virtual control of the administrative and executive Government, leaving the chief of the State no attributes but those of a bald figurehead. Coming direct from Australia and New Zealand, where the disgust of party government after the English model is daily growing, as its expensiveness and inefficiency become more apparent, it seemed a strange fate to find a South American dictator giving voice, as it were, to the more or less just complaint of the Australasian Democracy. It might seem a case of the Devil quoting Scripture. It is well for Deodoro that revolution in Rio just now does not spell retribution, or the gentle attention of a headsman or firing party might be the only alternative to the degradation of being reduced to the condition of a " mere plaything of political indiscipline." As it is, he retires to his island "to await events," as he magniloquently expresses it, "with the imperturbable calm of one who knows th?t he has already received his highest reward in the applause with which the world hailed the completion of the Republican America." This is certainly better than block or bullet.

One nasty accompaniment of the late regime of martial law was the system of " recruiting "—i.e., forcibly impressing into the army any persons wandering at large without visible lawful means of Bupport. The compiehensive interpretation given by the officials to this law of vagabondage would probably sooner or later have involved Deodoro in foreign complications, as on several occasions foreigners of the most undoubted respectability were arrested in the close vicinity of their hotel, and after longer or shorter periods of incarceration with real rogues and vagabonds were released, when further detention was impossible, without a word of regret or apology, This could not have gone on. It is against the rules of the port of Rio for any ship to make its entrance or exit after dark. This regulation is relaxed in favor of outgoing mail steamers, in order to give the dawdling post office officials time to sort and bag the letters, which of course they could not possibly do by daylight. The steamers might slip away when their patience was exhausted without the mails were it not for a little dodge the port authorities resort to. This consists in a password, which is not communicated to the outgoing " skipper "' till the mails, for which he vainly fumes and frets, with steam up and anchor swinging, are safely put on board, a few hours more or less behind time. If he were to sneak away without the password he would have to run the gauntlet of the fort guns, which, if rumor speaks truly, were once actually brought to bear on one of the New Zealand Shipping Company's "liners." We ourselves seem to have a close shave. The mails were very late, and were only got on board after a series of those marvellous manoeuvres which are seen in foreign ports when a small boat has to be brought alongside a big one. This triumph of " how not to do it " having been gone through, to the huge amusement and ultimately with the humane aid of our "jacks," we got underweigh at last; the lights of the city glowing all around and the myriad stars gleaming back ;from the sky above us as we steamed away from this scene of "revolution." The water rippled gently about our bows and the night air rushed coolingly over our parched decks, much to the joy of the sun-scorched passengers, who had been ashore all day undergoing the multitudinous miseries of sightseeing.

As we forged ahead faster and faster a gun from the mainland port of Santa Cruz on our stacboard side boomed forth the news to the island forts further away on the port bow that a strange, and it might be unlicensed, sail was making out of the harbor. When we neared the latter the password was not ready at the moment;, and a hoarse voice bawled out to us through a trumpet across the moonlit " briny " some words the exact meaning of which was undistinguishable, but the tone of which was most distinguishably menacing. At least, we thought so, and a thrill of breathless excitement passed from stem to stern, the battered cathedral being in everybody's mind's eye. Happily, our blue lights blazed up amidships, leaving no room for suspicions of a furtive exit ; and now, too, the officer on the bridge called out the "shibboleth" to tfur stern interlocutor, who spake no more, so that we were at liberty to go seawards without further interruption from the lynx-eyed officials, who transfer their allegiance sp> rapidly from one executive figurehead to another, but who are ever on the alert against their common prey, the stranger. In the meantime the electric search light had been thrown on us from the shore, and, by some piece of clumsy management, instead of discovering our outline to the maladroit manipulators, lit up for us the stately proportions of the cathedral which the cannon ball had grazed the day before. In another instant the light was withdrawn, and the vision faded away, as will the fabric of Brazilian freedom, bo lately and so hopefully upreared, unless the movements of the State ship are subjected to the search light of an enlightened public opinion and the helm entrusted to strong and liberty-loving hands.