Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/268

 fresh legislation may hasten the advent of national liberty and justice.

The first colonists enslaved the Indians; and, despite the futile measures of emancipation adopted by the Portuguese crown in 1570, in 1647, and in 1684, these unfortunate natives remained in servitude until 1755, and would perhaps have been held to this day, had they not proved very unprofitable. Negroes were accordingly imported from other Portuguese dominions, and a slave-trade with the African coast naturally sprang up, and is only just ended. Portugal bound herself by treaty with England, in 1815, to abolish the trade. Brazil renewed the obligation in her own name in 1826. Yet in 1839 it was estimated that eighty thousand blacks were imported every year; and, ten years later, the Minister of Foreign Affairs reported that the brutal traffic had only been reduced one-fourth. The energetic action of England, declaring in 1845 that Brazilian slave-ships should be amenable to English authorities, led to a long diplomatic contest, and threats of war; but it bore fruit in 1850 in a statute wherein Brazil assimilated the trade to piracy, and in 1852 the emperor declared it virtually extinct.

In the mean time, an opposition, not to the slave-trade alone, but to slavery, too, gradually strengthened itself within the empire. Manumission became frequent, and the laws made it very easy. A society was organized under the protection of the emperor, which, every year, in open church, solemnly liberated a number of slaves; and in 1856 the English Embassador wrote home that the government had communicated to him their resolution gradually to abolish