• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The Honorable Deputy Dom Rocha Seabra declared that he could not permit a man such as the Baron de Canabrava, who is the honor and glory of the State, to be defamed by resentful men whose records would show that they had not bestowed on Bahia so much as a hundredth part of the benefits conferred on it by the founder of the Autonomist Party. And he added that he failed to understand why telegrams should be sent summoning a Jacobin such as Colonel Moreira César to Bahia, since to judge from the cruelty with which he had put down the uprising of Santa Catarina, his dream was to erect guillotines in every public square in Brazil and become the country’s Robespierre. This statement brought an angry protest from the Honorable Deputies of the Progressivist Republican Party, who, having risen to their feet, rousingly acclaimed the Army, Marshal Floriano Peixoto, and Colonel Moreira César, and demanded satisfaction for this insult blackening the name of a hero of the Republic. The Honorable Deputy Dom Rocha Seabra took the floor again to declare that it had not been his intention to cast aspersions upon Colonel Moreira César, whose military virtues he admired, nor to offend the memory of the late Marshal Floriano Peixoto, whose services to the Republic he recognized, but rather to make it clear that he was opposed to the intervention of men of the military in politics, since he did not want to see Brazil suffer the same fate as those South American countries whose history has been nothing but a succession of barrack-room pronunciamentos. The Honorable Deputy Dom Eliseu de Roque interrupted him to remind him that it had been the Brazilian Army that had put an end to the monarchy and installed the Republic, and rising to their feet once more, the Honorable Deputies of the opposition rendered homage to the Army and Marshal Floriano Peixoto and Colonel Moreira César. Continuing his remarks after this interruption, the Honorable Deputy Dom Rocha Seabra declared that it was absurd that federal intervention should be requested when His Excellency Governor Dom Luiz Viana had repeatedly asserted that the State of Bahia had the necessary means to suppress the outbreak of banditry and Sebastianist madness that Canudos represented. The Honorable Deputy Dom Epaminondas Gonçalves reminded the Assembly that the rebels had already decimated two military expeditions in the interior and asked the Honorable Deputy Dom Rocha Seabra how many more expeditionary forces had to be massacred, in his opinion, before federal intervention was justified. The Honorable Deputy Dom Dantas Horcadas declared that patriotism was sufficient justification for him or for anyone else to drag in the mud anyone who devoted his efforts to stirring up mud, that is to say, fomenting restorationist rebellions against the Republic in connivance with Perfidious Albion. The Honorable Deputy Dom Lélis Piedades declared that the most telling proof that the Baron de Canabrava was involved in no way whatsoever in the events brought about by the bloodthirsty rebels of Canudos was the fact that he had been outside of Brazil for several months now. The Honorable Deputy Floriano Mártir declared that his absence, rather than being proof of his lack of involvement, might be regarded as proof of precisely the opposite, and that nobody was fooled by such an alibi since all of Bahia was aware that no one moved a finger in the State without the authorization or an express order from the Baron de Canabrava. The Honorable Deputy Dom Dantas Horcadas declared that it was suspect and illuminative that the Honorable Deputies of the majority stubbornly refused to debate the question of the shipment of English arms and of the English agent Gall, sent by the British Crown to aid the rebels in their evil designs. The Honorable President of the Assembly, His Excellency Sir Adalberto de Gumúcio, declared that speculations and fantasies dictated by hatred and ignorance could readily be dispelled by simply stating the truth. And he announced that within a few days the Baron