Both had
been entirely subservient to the Mother Country. The laws which governed
Brazil and the Spanish colonies were framed on the same model, and the
disadvantages under which the colonists of either nation had laboured
from the start had been practically identical.
With the upheaval which occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, a new order came into being, so far as the Spaniards and
Portuguese were concerned. The parting of the ways was now marked. It
is, indeed, curious to notice that, while Spanish South America was
strenuously engaged in transforming itself from the status of a royal
colony to that of a group of independent republics, an operation was
being carried out in Brazil, the effect of which was precisely the
reverse.
Brazil, in fact, in place of the neglect of centuries from which she had
suffered, now underwent a sudden, dazzling, and altogether unexpected
shower of honours and distinctions. That this did not come about
spontaneously affected the colony but little; the fact remained that she
was destined in a remarkably short space of time to rise from a colony
to a kingdom, and from a kingdom to an empire. The circumstances which
led to this transformation were sufficiently dramatic in themselves.
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