We understand that the ne...
The Times, 1824-07-10T00:00:00

We understand that the negotiations between the Con. missioners of Portugal and of Brazil have, up to a certain point, advanced with considerable hope of a successful issue: the meaning of which we must take to be, that there is some understood condition on which the principle con- tended for by Brazil-natnely, its absolute independence of Portugal-will be admitted by the Government of the latter country. The point, however, " up to" which rrat- ters are said to have proceeded smeothly, is just that point beyond which there appeared from the outset hardly a like. lihoDd that the Commissioners would make any progress whatever. It is one, in fact, whicb, under a collateral and secondary form, embraces the whole substance of this na- tional dispute. Portugal may profess to recognize the in- dependence of the Brazilian empire; but if, as a rider upon that concessien, she calls for such an act of settlement as shall hereafter unite both crowns on the head of a single Sovereign, it is plain that the whole object con- tended for by Brazil would be frustrated, and the acknowledgment of her (listinct sovereignty a mere il- lusion. The freedom desired by Brazil is notan empty honour. She has been prompted to the exercise of it by her experience of the practical evils arisihg from the domi- nion asserted, and the policy enforced, by thi parent coun- try-by the chains imposed upon her commerce-the jea- lous and oppressive maxims on which her internal govern- ment was conducted-and- the uniform sutbjection and sacrifice of her interests, whenevei they were presumued to come into competition with those of Portugal. When the people of Brazil contend for an entire overthrow of the Portuguese authority, they insist, ex vi termini, ou an effectual separation of the Crowns; because, to imagine one King and one system of councils directing the afflairs of two distant countries, having interests, or, to speak more justly, prejudices, passions, and schemes of policy at open variance, each with those of the other, would be to fancy a political monster, which must perpetually counteract and finally destroy itself, except by making one division of this heterogelleeus empire, as it has been heretofore, a prey to its rival-the very condition from which it has been the purpose of the South American Revolutioniists to rescue themselves an(d their posterity. If the question, then, hitches upon this point of the succession to the thrones of Brazil and Portugal, it is difficult to see how it can beami- cably-that is, speedily-settled. Don PEDRO, in all hu- man probability, will cease to be an Emperor in South America if he seeks to wear a European crowvn. A strong current of popular feeling among the Americans already sets against Alonarchy, even in its, most mitigated form. A little thing would serve to republicanize the Brazilians, like all their brethren of the same hemisphere; and the bare avowal that their Emperor vwas in any manner mixed up with negotiations tending to re-unite the two sovcreignties, would be the signal for a combined movement on the other side the Atlantic, which might shortly end in his destruc- tion. To be sure, the alternative is not the most flattering to the prospects of the Portuguese themselves. They have yet no resource, after the death of JOHN VI., but in Don PKDRO or the hopeful MIGUEL-MIGUuL, with his mother for a preceptress, and FLRDINAND the high-minded for a model !