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By Root 1941 0

Bahia had confirmed this, and produced the order of expulsion from the country delivered to the aforementioned individual, who was to ready himself to leave on the French boat La Marseillaise. The Honorable Deputy further added that the fact that the individual known as Galileo Gall had failed to obey the order of expulsion and been found a month later in the interior of the State with rifles in his possession in no way constituted proof of a political conspiracy or of the intervention of a foreign power; on the contrary, it was proof, at most, that the aforementioned scoundrel was attempting to smuggle arms to buyers certain to pay, being well provided with money from their multiple robberies, namely the fanatical Sebastianists led by Antônio Conselheiro. As the remarks by the Honorable Deputy Dom João Seixas de Pondé provoked hilarious laughter on the part of the Honorable Deputies of the opposition, who made gestures suggesting that he had angel’s wings and a saint’s halo, the Honorable President of the Assembly, His Excellency Baron Adalberto de Gumúcio, called for order in the house. The Honorable Deputy Dom João Seixas de Pondé declared that it was hypocritical to cause such an uproar over the discovery of a few rifles in the backlands when everyone knew that smuggling and trafficking in arms was unfortunately more or less the general rule in the interior, and if this were not true, could the Honorable Deputies of the opposition explain how the Progressivist Republican Party had armed the capangas and cangaceiros they had recruited to form the private Army that went by the name of the Bahia Rural Guard, whose intended purpose was to function outside the official institutions of the State? The Honorable Deputy Dom João Seixas de Pondé having been indignantly jeered at for his insulting words by the Honorable Deputies of the Progressivist Republican Party, the Honorable President of the Assembly was obliged to call for order in the house once again.

The Honorable Deputy Epaminondas Gonçalves declared that the Honorable Deputies of the majority were becoming more and more bogged down in their own contradictions and lies, as inevitably happens to those who walk over quicksand. And he thanked heaven that it had been the Rural Guard that had captured the English rifles and the English agent Gall, for it was an independent, sound, patriotic, genuinely Republican corps, which had alerted the authorities of the Federal Government to the seriousness of the events that had taken place and taken all necessary measures to prevent any attempt to hide the proofs of the collaboration of the native monarchists with the British Crown in the plot against Brazilian sovereignty of which Canudos was the spearhead. In fact, had it not been for the Rural Guard, he declared, the Republic would never have learned of the presence of English agents transporting through the backlands shipments of rifles for the restorationists of Canudos. The Honorable Deputy Dom Eduardo Glicério interrupted him to inform him that the only trace of the famous English agent that had been found was a handful of hair that could well have been that of a redheaded woman or a horse’s mane, a sally that brought laughter from both the benches of the majority and those of the opposition. Continuing after this interruption, the Honorable Deputy Dom Epaminondas Gonçalves declared that he applauded the sense of humor of the Honorable Deputy who had interrupted him, but that when the sovereign interests of the Country were threatened, and the blood of the patriots who had fallen in defense of the Republic in Uauá and on the slopes of Monte Cambaio was still warm, the moment was perhaps not an appropriate one for jokes, a remark which brought thunderous applause from the Honorable Deputies of the opposition.

The Honorable Deputy Dom Eliseu de Roque reminded the Assembly that there was incontrovertible proof of the identity of the corpse found in Ipupiará, along with the English rifles, and declared that to refuse to admit the existence of such proof was to refuse to admit