FIGURE 10. Production of periodicals at the Fluminense Press of Brito & Co. (1832–1835). Source: Catalogue of Periodicals in the Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth (AEL-Unicamp)
Press Laws and Offences in the “Days of Father Feijó”
IT WAS NOT just the court of public opinion that tried and convicted people, carrying out the sentences by destroying printing presses or murdering Portuguese nationals in Mato Grosso province. There were also press laws in effect in Brazil. This legislation lies at the heart of the problem we will discuss in this chapter: the sharp fall in production of new periodicals at the Fluminense Press of Brito & Co. between 1834 and 1835—as we can see in Figure 10—and its ramifications.
As Table 2 also shows, Brito’s establishment only published one new title in 1834 and five the following year, numbers that reflect a broader trend in the Rio de Janeiro press. In 1834, just seven new periodicals were available in the capital, and the following year, there were just eighteen.1 Since, as we know, just two presses were destroyed and Paula Brito’s remained intact, albeit under threat, it is unlikely that the events of December 5, 1833 were the only reason for the drop in the number of publications produced in 1834. A good start for understanding the reasons for that downturn is to take a look at the newspapers printed at the Fluminense Press—not all of them this time, as we will follow the clues found in Sete d’Abril, a Moderate paper that showed no sympathy for our printer. In April 1835, while sarcastically comparing the printer to the famous French actor, François-Joseph Talma, the editor of Sete d’Abril claimed that some newspapers were written by Paula Brito himself:
FIGURE 10. Production of periodicals at the Fluminense Press of Brito & Co. (1832–1835). Source: Catalogue of Periodicals in the Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth (AEL-Unicamp)
List of the periodicals said to be scribbled by Mr. Paula Brito—O simplício às direitas, A mulher do simplício, A novidade, A formiga, Café da tarde, Estafeta anárquico, etc., etc., etc., and more recently Judas e seu testamento. In this last publication he capably played the role of executor [of Judas’s Last Will and Testament]. And they say that Talmas only appear in France!2
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find issues of Simplício às direitas, A formiga, O estafeta anárquico, or Judas e seu testamento. However, like Mulher do simplício, of which we only have the December 1835 issue, issues of Novidade and Café da tarde still survive. Furthermore, the fact that these newspapers were printed at the Fluminense Press of Brito & Co. increases the probability that the editor of Sete d’Abril was right to say that both were “scribbled by Mr. Paula Brito.”
The Additional Act to the Constitution, enacted in August 1834, stated that the choice of the new regent who would govern for four years would be made by census suffrage. These elections, which involved approximately six thousand voters scattered throughout Brazil, were held on April 7, 1835. Each voter cast two ballots, choosing two of several candidates for the post. Although there were many options—Costa Carvalho, Lima e Silva, Araújo Lima, Pais de Andrade, and Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos, to name a few—two candidates polarized the electorate: Holanda Cavalcanti from Pernambuco and Father Feijó from São Paulo Province.3 Octávio Tarquínio de Sousa describes the brothers Luís Cavalcanti and Holanda Cavalcanti as “a combination of aristocrats and libertarians, arrogant landowners and at the same time liberal agitators.” According to Feijó’s biographer, Holanda Cavalcanti’s partisans in the 1835 elections included Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, the future Marquess of Paraná, and one of the leaders of the Conservative party,4 with whom Paula Brito would establish closer ties in the 1840s. Therefore, it is suggestive that the newspapers the editor of the Sete d’Abril claimed to be written by Paula Brito, and which were in fact printed by him, unreservedly supported the candidacy of Holanda Cavalcanti to the detriment of Feijó.
TABLE 2 Newspapers printed by the Fluminense Press of Brito & Co. (1834–1835)
Source: Catálogo de periódicos do Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth (AEL-Unicamp).
Thus, A novidade stated: “the election of Mr. Feijo, [would be] a calamity, worse than any plague and scourge that Divine Providence in its wrath might send against this nascent Empire.”5 Café da tarde, in turn, used irony when advocating the same editorial policy. That newspaper certainly got its readers laughing when it stated, for example, that “there is no man like Feijó” and that if he made mistakes, writing “absurdities in the Justiceiro,” he only did so because he suffered from almorreimas (hemorrhoids):
Do not trust, Voters, what is being put about, that Feijó is very ill, and that due to his continuous maladies he cannot take care of the regency: these are inventions of Feijó`s enemies: Feijó’s disease is not a cause for concern so that you should not elect him; his malady, (I have it from a worthy source) is almorreimas, which sometimes go to his head, and make the priest beat it like a madman; but this is of no avail, and only now they prevent him from riding a horse because they are inflamed; but then we do not want the regent to ride on horseback, but to govern.6
However, Novidade also provides a highly plausible reason for the fall in the number of new newspapers printed in Rio de Janeiro in 1834. In the opening article in its first issue, which served as a prospectus for the publication, the editor (Paula Brito?) had these flattering words for the prosecutor Antônio de Falcão Miranda:
A young Brazilian, son of the S. Paulo Law School, whom we respect, we ask his permission to publish from time to time the Novidades (news) of this city, promising never to perturb him with any responsibility, so we will not offend public morals, religion, the fair sex, the law; nor will we discuss restoration, as long as, for the soul of its captives, he lets us entertain the public already tired of waiting for improvements in the Nation.7
Following the wave of restorationism that swept through Rio and other parts of the Empire in late 1833 and early 1834, was the government—and consequently the justice system—keeping a closer eye on the press? As the editor of A novidade asked the prosecutor for “permission to publish from time to time,” that is very likely. Indeed, this vigilance must have inhibited the publication of new titles. But the situation worsened the following year, particularly for the opposition newspapers, when Feijó defeated Holanda Cavalcanti and became Sole Regent.8
In late May 1836, then Regent Feijó wrote to Paulino José Soares, demonstrating how much the “abuses” committed by some periodicals and presses in Rio were worrying him. On that occasion, Feijó insisted that the law should be enforced, no matter whether it was by the chief of police or the municipal judge.9 His letter singles out one newspaper in particular—Raio de Júpiter (Jupiter’s lightning bolt), which was then the target of implacable persecution, along with Sete d’Abril and Pão de açúcar. According to Sete d’Abril, the government had declared “war and war to the death, persecution and extermination” against Raio de Júpiter because that newspaper had seriously questioned the legitimacy of the 1835 election.10 In a matter of days, Sete d’Abril was also charged with the “crime of abuse of the press.”11 In the case of Pão de açúcar, which was charged with the same offence in April 1836, the editor of that newspaper, José da Cruz Pirajá, had to come forward and take responsibility for the publication, as the printer responsible for publishing the newspaper was under siege. And who was he? None other than Nicolau Lobo Vianna, the owner of the Diário Press, which was destroyed in December 1833. Pirajá pleaded, “If it is a crime to speak frankly, do not take revenge on one who has no part in it. Spare the not-guilty printer: let the lightning bolts of revenge fall on us.”12
The regent’s “war on the press,” waged in April and May 1836, was also the subject of heated debates in the Chamber of Deputies. During the May 13 session, Figueira de Mello, who, along with Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos and other deputies, was in the opposition to Feijó’s government, discussed the matter in his response to the emperor’s Speech from the Throne. The deputy charged that “many periodicals have disappeared due to the ministry’s persecutions, and even typesetters, who are not at all responsible for the newspapers, have been arrested.”13 In April 1842, Paula Brito published a letter in Jornal do commercio stating that, as in “the days of Mr. Feijó,” newspapers were being accused of press crimes and, as a result, he had nearly ended up behind bars:
As long as I have had a printing press, I have only stopped printing one newspaper, after having produced several issues; that was the Cidadão, and this was because of some less-than-honest articles that came out in them; but Esbarras, Fado dos Chimangos and others have never dishonored my workshop.
In the days of Mr. Feijó, I saw newspapers accused the day they were published; I was heavily beset and finally I was under indictment for more than two years! Because of Bússola da Liberdade, I was ordered to present those responsible within two hours on pain of arrest!14
In the context of the debate in which he was taking part, involving a lawsuit against the Widow Ogier, this letter says a great deal about the political stance that Paula Brito adopted after the Age of Majority coup. However, it does not specify to which “days of Mr. Feijó” the printer was referring—whether it is between 1831 and 1832, when the priest was justice minister, or between 1835 and 1837, when he was regent. During both periods of Feijó’s political career, there is solid evidence that publishers and printers were persecuted for press crimes. In 1832, the lengthy criminal case brought against Joaquim d’Abreu Gama and Nicolau Lobo Vianna, both of whom were arrested and convicted of publishing the Restorationist newspaper O Caramuru, produced some of the most complete case records on such crimes that I have found in the course of my research. The records state that the printer was captured in an ambush set up by Chief Constable Luiz Manuel Álvares de Azevedo, who had “invited him in an official letter” to appear at his home “for the good of public and national service.” Vianna was arrested there without being informed of the charges against him.15 Two years later, when the Moderates began clamping down on the opposition press, Paula Brito fell afoul of the law due to the publication of Seis de Abril Extraordinário, a newspaper which certainly was another that did not survive the ravages of time.
The case became public when Diário do Rio de Janeiro published a list of proceedings in 1840.16 At the time, Paula Brito made a point of issuing a note clarifying “that my case has already been tried and [I was] acquitted; and thus I am free of the only charge I suffered as the printer of the newspaper Seis d’Abril, which was born in 1834.”17 Again, it is necessary to read the note in the political context of the late 1830s. But before we move in that direction, we must understand how the law affected publishers and printers at a time when writing might not be as risky as printing.18
The report that Feijó presented to the Legislative Assembly in May 1832, when the priest was justice minister, already pointed out that “the license of writing” was a “cause of no less fecund immorality.” Feijó began his reflections in a somewhat indulgent tone, discussing how the “prestige of the press offers itself to the . . . uncertain judgment” of “a still ignorant people” and “a fiery youth, whose years are appearing on the horizon of a still poorly established and little clarified freedom.” Following the Minister’s assessment, this “uncertain judgment” could explain why “any man of letters, and without morals, spreads false principles with impunity: he attacks the private and public life of the honest citizen: inflames passions and disrupts society.”19 Feijó resented the law’s inability to “punish these abuses,” particularly because there were ways in which a writer could evade responsibility for his writings:
Measures must be taken so that the writer cannot deceive the good faith of the readers, hiding his name, perhaps [a] very despicable [one], nor escape the prompt punishment of his temerity. Insults, slander, and threats, which the law of October 26 of last year so wisely classified as police crimes, when published, should be prosecuted in the same way: simplified proceedings, prompt sentencing, will allay the resentment of offended honor: the dreadful consequences of wounded self-esteem will be avoided, and the audacity of a man without honor and without manners will be contained.20
The legislation in question was the Law of October 26, 1831, which, as a supplement to the measures taken to suppress the tumult in the streets of Rio de Janeiro after the Seventh of April, prescribed “how to prosecute public and private crimes” while addressing “police crimes.” In article 5 it stated that “minor physical offenses, insults, and unpublished slanders, and threats, will be considered police crimes, and as such will be prosecuted.”21 In fact, Feijó wanted insults and slander to be prosecuted as “police crimes,” which were unbailable offences when caught in the act.22
However, as the “writer discovers many means of escape,” the minister’s reflection on abuses of “license to write,” going beyond punishment, rested on the problem of responsibility. According to the lawyer Paulo Domingues Viana, punishment of press crimes could be meted out in three ways. In the first, based on so-called common law, or the “English system,” all those involved in producing the writing—the author, printer, and publisher—are held responsible, and as such, are considered respondents and/or co-respondents. The German system was quite similar, in which, apart from mutual responsibility, showed no sign of being voluntary, which was characteristic of the third, the Belgian system, also known as the “chain of responsibility.” It is precisely with this system that we must concern ourselves, for, as Viana observes, it was not exclusively Belgian.23
The cornerstone of Imperial Brazil’s criminal law regarding press offenses, the “chain of responsibility system” was clearly explained in the first decree on that matter, issued by King João VI on March 2, 1821. The law in question sought to establish a complex middle ground between “the obstacles which the prior censorship of writing posed to the propagation of truth, as well as the abuses that unlimited freedom of the press could bring to religion, morality, or public peace.” It was a difficult balance to strike because, while prior censorship was abolished, another kind of censorship was introduced through prosecutions, because printers were obliged to submit two sets of proofs for examination. If the printed matter was found to contain “anything that is contrary to religion, morals, and good habits, against the Constitution and the Person of the Sovereign or against the public peace,” publication would be halted “until the necessary corrections are made.” Booksellers, who were obliged to report which books they sold, and printers were thus liable to confiscations, fines, and imprisonment. In the case of “seditious or subversive writings,” His Majesty explained who would be “responsible before the courts of these my realms due to the nature and consequences of the doctrines and assertions contained in them”: “firstly, their authors, and when these are not known, the publishers, and finally the sellers or distributors, in the event that they have knowledge of or are complicit in the dissemination of such doctrines and assertions.”24 The principle of the chain of responsibility had been established.
Prince Pedro’s regency began a few weeks after João VI returned to Portugal. In the ensuing months, the prince regent, who was then a liberal ruler in the vacuum left by the Liberal Revolution of 1820 in Oporto (Porto), signed two major decrees regarding the press and reading practices. The first allowed all books except those considered obscene through the Rio de Janeiro customs house, and the second allowed freedom of the press in accordance with the regulations of the Lisbon Cortes.25 However, the issue of anonymity came into the debate when, in a communiqué issued on September 24, 1821, the board of directors of the National Press (Tipografia Nacional) expressed its opposition to that practice.26
Certainly, the communiqué suited the board’s immediate aims, as it was more interested in avoiding “responsibility for the printing of writings” by ensuring the compulsory identification of authors and publishers. However, insofar as it indirectly suspended the chain of responsibility system enshrined in the Decree of March 2, 1821, the communiqué ended up going beyond such interests. Other printers could and would certainly benefit from this regulation. After all, if printers only “printed books,” as defined by Silva Pinto’s Portuguese dictionary,27 why should they be incriminated by the content they printed? Pedro may have agreed that the chain of responsibility contained serious contradictions. So much so that, in the ordinance signed on January 15, 1822, the prince simultaneously halted publication and confiscated all copies of Heroicidade brasileira (Brazilian heroism) and determined that the board of directors of the National Press “should never consent to printing anything without publishing in the publication the name of the person who must answer for its contents.”28
However, that ordinance was short-lived. Four days later, the all-powerful minister José Bonifácio revoked it as follows: “The Prince Regent hereby sends through the same Secretary of State, to declare to the said board that it must not obstruct the printing of anonymous writings; because the author must be held responsible for any abuses they contain, even though his name has not been published; and if this [name] is withheld, the publisher, or printer [will be held responsible] according to the law regulating freedom of the press.”29 In addition to reestablishing the chain of responsibility principle, the Ordinance of January 19, 1822, officially established the right to anonymity, a practice which, in Marcello de Ipanema’s view, was the “old and terrible poisoned tree of the Imperial press.” The ordinance would only be overturned in the Republican Constitution of 1891.30 Anonymity was an important political weapon, so it had to be preserved. This is because, according to José Murilo de Carvalho, “many politicians wrote in newspapers in which anonymity enabled them to say what they would not dare [utter in] the Senate Chamber.”31 Therefore, despite a few amendments, subsequent legislation did not make any substantial changes in this system. This would be seen in the well-structured press bill presented to the National Constituent Assembly in October 1823.32
In its first article, the bill abolished censorship, and in the second, it stated that in the Empire of Brazil “anyone was free to print, publish, sell, and buy books, and writings of all kinds without any responsibility, other than in the cases stipulated in this law.”33 However, such cases were numerous, and the punishments meted out included prison sentences, fines, and exile.34 The bill also set out the details of the qualification of the offenses and the formalization of the charges, as well as the election of the judges in charge of such cases and the procedures that would guide their work. The bill was considered so comprehensive that, after the first reading in the House, a deputy called for a “second reading to be dispensed with because [it] takes too much time and it is no use hearing so many articles [read] again.”35
As we have seen, article 16 reaffirmed the established principle of the chain of responsibilities:
16. For abuse, in any of these cases, the author or translator will be held responsible; when they are not named or, when they are, they are found to reside outside the Empire, responsibility will fall on the printer; and for abuses committed in writings printed in foreign countries, responsibility will fall on those who publish them or sell them in this Empire.36
Articles 3 and 4 were key and supplemented the investigation of these responsibilities, at least those of the printer:
3. All writings printed in the Empire of Brazil must show the place and year of the printing, and the name of the printer: anyone who prints, publishes, or sell any writings without [fulfilling] these requirements will be fined 50,000 réis, and whoever buys them will lose the copies that have bought, and twice their [face] value.
4. Anyone who falsifies any of the requirements mentioned in the preceding article shall be fined 50,000 réis, and when such falsification attributes the publication to any person in the empire, the fine will be doubled.37
The bill made it obligatory to publish an imprint statement, requiring, on pain of fines, that information be provided about the place and year of publication and the name of the printer. Therefore, while the authors’ anonymity had been preserved, that of the printers had not, as they were obliged to “undersign” all the works that left their presses, no matter what they contained. In effect, in the case of anonymous subversive writers, the printers would be the first to be identified. The press bill was debated in the Constituent Assembly about a month later, during the sessions held on November 8 and 10. The debates did not go beyond article 6 because, after an intense power struggle between the deputies and Pedro I, the Constituent Assembly was arbitrarily dissolved.38 However, eleven days later, the press bill became law through the Decree of November 22, 1823, without any changes, and the compulsory identification of printers and publishers was maintained, along with remaining silent regarding authors’ anonymity.39
The Constitution granted in 1824 did nothing to change this situation.40 However, in June of that year, Joaquim Gonçalves Ledo presented the Chamber of Deputies with a new “bill against crimes of abuse of freedom of the press.” Although it failed to advance, it is interesting to note the solutions Ledo proposed to the matter of responsibilities. Title II of his bill is entirely devoted to the subject, deciding immediately in the first article that “the person responsible for any writing, and of any nature whatsoever: 1 the author of the writing, 2 the presenter of it,” and in article 3 that “in the absence of the author and the presenter, those held responsible are: 1 the printer, 2 the publisher, 3 the seller.” Printers, publishers, and merchants would only be exempt from the considerable fine of one million réis if they presented a “signed statement of responsibility” in which “the signature is recognized by a notary.” In article 6, the obligation to publish an imprint statement was reaffirmed.41
In September 1830, a new law came into effect, instigated by the Speech from the Throne at the opening of the Legislative General Assembly. On that occasion, Pedro I demanded that deputies take action regarding “the need to repress by legal means the continuing abuse of freedom of the press throughout the Empire.”42 As in Gonçalves Ledo’s bill, Title II of the new law established “Responsibilities” according to the principle of successive guilt that had been in force since 1821—that the printer, publisher, author, and finally the seller would be held responsible for any “printed or engraved” matter. Therefore, authors would only be held responsible for their manuscripts, which would be the responsibility of the printers if they went to press.
A short time later, in December 1830, the enactment of the Empire’s Criminal Code brought new laws on freedom of the press into effect. While article 7 of the Criminal Code, regarding cases of “abuse of the freedom to communicate thoughts,” added little to the previous laws, from then on such offences were considered common crimes.43 However, the Criminal Code did usher in one innovation—the compulsory registration of publishers, printers, and lithographers, as well as the obligation to send a copy of every printed item to the public prosecutor’s office.44
The law was unfavorable for printers in many ways. Therefore, the only way for men like Francisco de Paula Brito, Nicolau Lobo Vianna, and other owners of presses throughout the country to avoid falling afoul of it was by presenting letters of responsibility signed by the authors. Paula Brito had to do so when he was called before the courts for printing Bússola da liberdade (Compass of freedom). As we have seen, if he had not had the letter of responsibility at hand, according to his own account, he would have gone to jail.45
Feijó’s relations with the press were far from cordial, especially in 1836. He even attempted to reorganize press legislation through the Decree of March 18, 1837, which provided guidance for prosecutions and sentencing in crimes of that nature. However, the system of responsibilities remained unchanged, with just one important addition in article 8, which stated that printers and publishers could only present letters of responsibility that had been recognized by a notary on the same day or prior to the date of publication.46 However, this decree was revoked shortly after Feijó fell from office. Finally, in the days of the Conservative Return, the reform of the Criminal Code carried out by Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos put press crimes within the jurisdiction of chiefs of police.47
However, Paula Britos’s problems with the law did not go that far. After an uncertain start, like all beginnings, the son of the freedman Jacinto and grandson of the captain of the Pardos Battalion purchased his cousin’s bookshop, added a printing press, and, along with a business partner, printed newspapers with different political leanings. As a result, he was prosecuted and nearly saw his establishment ransacked and destroyed. Most likely for that very reason, as of October 1835 Paula Brito opted for impartiality—at least in the name of his new press, the Tipografia Imparcial de Brito, or Brito’s Impartial Press. The times and desires were changing.