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132 Françoise Latour da Veiga Pinto,

A. Carreira

to the nex order of the freedom of the seas which had replaced the Papacy's

arbitrary division of the world between two nations, so, at the beginning of the

nineteenth century, she was unprepared to face the new economic order dic-

tated by Great Britain on the basis of free trade. This system again threatened

the existence of her empire, based as it was on the triangular trade and the

colonial pact. The slave trade, with its rules and its organized markets, was

inimical to free trade; and the atrocities that had followed one another endlessly

for centuries in the course of the trade were beginning to revolt public opinion.

It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the voices that were raised in

opposition were beginning to get a hearing—others raised earlier having fallen

on deaf ears—and this was happening in Great Britain. Following a long

humanitarian campaign in which such men as Sharp, Wilberforce and Macaulay

won renown, Great Britain abolished the slave trade on 25 March 1807. Thence-

forth, the British Government did its utmost to persuade the powers that prac-

tised it to make an end of it. Under pressure from Great Britain, Portugal,

on 19 February 1810, signed a treaty of alliance and friendship, under Article X

of which she undertook

to co-operate in the cause of humanity and justice, by adopting the most efficacious

means for bringing about a gradual Abolition of the Slave Trade throughout the whole

of her territories ... while reserving to her own vassals in the African territories of the

Portuguese Crown the right to purchase and deal in slaves.

The Portuguese Government, however, had only given in to Great Britain out
of weakness. It had had to take refuge in Brazil, and British support was its
only hope of reconquering its metropolitan territory. The abolition of the slave
trade in so rapid and radical a way raised problems that were practically
insoluble. Portugal at that time had virtually no industry; and the economic
transformation of the country was bound to be slow, laborious and beset
with great difficulties.
At the congress of Vienna, Portugal managed to make her case heard.
Under the treaty of 22 January 1815 she obtained the annulment of the previous
agreement. From then on the prohibition applied only to the slave trade north
of the Equator, thus exempting Brazil's trade with Angola, the Congo and
Mozambique. The powers that Great Britain was urging to abolish the slave
trade confined themselves to declaring that they were animated

by the desire to co-operate in the most prompt and effective execution of this measure
by all the means at their command, and to use these means with all the zeal and perse-
verance due to so great and fine a cause; [adding that]... the fixing of the time when
this trade must universally cease shall be a matter for negotiation between the Powers.