ificed.

Rio de Janeiro had enjoyed a greater degree of tranquillity during the
eighty years since its foundation than any other settlement, and its
trade had increased together with its population; but the southern part
of its jurisdiction was little more peaceable than Maranham, and not at
all more inclined to listen to the remonstrances of the friends of the
Indians. The Paulistas were the most difficult of all to manage; they
had been the most active and daring of all that hunted either for slaves
or for mines, and they were not willing to participate with others, far
less to resign the advantages they had gained by unwearied labour and
great sacrifices. Their conduct on the restoration of Portugal had
evinced a desire of more than the freedom of a colony, and their
neighbours were little less disposed for independence than themselves.
Santos, and even Rio, had joined them, and had shewn a disposition to
depose the governor appointed by the crown; and nothing but the
unimpeachable character and firm conduct of Salvador Correa de Sa e
Benevides (1658) prevented him from falling a sacrifice to that
disposition. Bahia continued to be the capital of the Brazilian states,
and its inhabitants proceeded to beautify it with churches, and
convents, and nunneries, while they defied the spirit of Christianity by
the importation of African, as well as the kidnapping Indian slaves.
Pernambuco was still undergoing the miserable effects of the long and
desultory war it had sustained; all the bands of government had been
loosed during that disastrous period; law and justice had fallen into
disuse; and had there not been a redeeming virtue in the free spirit
that lived on in spite of the evils among which it had sprung, its very
emancipation from a foreign power might have been regretted. The negroes
who had escaped to the Palmares, and whose depredations had been
disregarded in comparison with the evils of a foreign government, had
become a real source of ill to the Pernambucans. Although they
cultivated maize, and mandioc, and plaintains, they wanted every other
supply. They therefore robbed the Creoles of their cattle, their sugar,
their manufactured goods, and even of their Mulatto daughters and female
slaves; till at length the government resolved to free the country of
them, and called in the aid of a Paulista regiment for the purpose. Ten
thousand of the negroes bearing arms had assembled in their chief city,
which was surrou