The prince prevented a federal disaggregation and founded the unity of Brazil. He united the representatives of the rebellious provinces, convoked, in 1822, a Constituent Assembly, visited the country districts, and became the "perpetual defender of Brazil." Like the Gothic kings at the time of the Moorish invasion, or the French princes who were faced with feudal anarchy, he founded a national dynasty, and bound the unity and independence of Brazil with the destinies of the monarchy. Dom { 183} João VI. had raised Brazil to the rank of a kingdom; Pedro I. rendered it independent of Portugal. "Independence or death!" he cried, in his triumphant Odyssey across the rebellious provinces. At Ipiranga floated the new flag, gold and green, of the new-born Empire. Pedro I. was crowned Constitutional Emperor in December, 1822.
José Bonifacio Andrade e Silva, naturalist, philosopher, and soldier, an encyclopædist according to the French tradition, was the minister of this national transformation; he condemned the revolution, having previously supported natural rights and excessive liberties. He suppressed the journals, and the monarch dissolved the Constituent Assembly, whose violence and lyrical propensities were not a help to the political action of a conservative minister.
Extreme groups were formed which the Emperor endeavoured to conciliate: reactionaries who wanted an absolute government, idealists who wished for a republic, moderates, and conciliatory monarchists who sought a gradual progress under a stable government. Weary of revolutions the Emperor inaugurated a despotic _régime_; he withdrew from the Assembly, exiled the rebels, among others Andrade, now radical but formerly a reactionary, and always greedy for power. He surrounded himself with Portuguese troops, and the new nobility, the _filhos do reinho_, and the press attacked him in the name of nationalism. It demanded the persecution of favourites, as in the Spanish colonies the expulsion of the old ruling classes was decreed.
The Emperor once again united the moderate parties, and demanded a Constitution, to which the country swore allegiance in 1824; it was a constitutional charter, an imitation of the liberal European charters. In 1826 he convoked a new National Assembly. Revolutions were still disturbing the country; some provinces wished to secede { 184} from the new kingdom; Pernambuco was always the centre of liberalism. An old patriot, Paez de Andrade, hoped to unite the Northern States of Brazil in the "Confederation of the Equator." The monarch sent troops to the north to intimidate the country, and the Lower Chamber condemned this act of despotism; a radical priest, Diego Antonio Feijó, led the radical opposition. He was a revolutionary in Parliament, demanding a responsible government, and condemning the ministers who forced peace upon the provinces by means of foreign legions, German and Irish mercenaries.
