130 CHAPTER 6 COLONIAL BRAZIL
population was tithes, which came to 10 percent
of the total product, originally payable in kind but
later only in cash. Tithes, writes the Brazilian his-
torian Caio Prado Júnior, “ran neck and neck with
conscription as one of the great scourges infl icted
on the population by the colonial administration.”
The besetting vices of Spanish colonial ad-
ministration—ineffi ciency, bureaucratic attitudes,
slowness, and corruption—were equally promi-
nent in the Portuguese colonial system. Justice
was not only costly but incredibly slow and compli-
cated. Cases brought before lower courts ascended
the ladder of the higher tribunals: ouvidor, relação,
and on up to the crown Board of Appeals, taking as
long as ten to fi fteen years for resolution.
Over vast areas of the colony, however, admin-
istration and courts were virtually nonexistent.
Away from the few large towns, local government
often meant the rule of great landowners, who
joined to their personal infl uence the authority
of offi ce, for it was from their ranks that the royal
governors invariably appointed the capitães mores
(district militia offi cers). Armed with unlimited
power to enlist, command, arrest, and punish, the
capitão mor became a popular symbol of despotism
and oppression. Sometimes these men used the lo-
cal militia as feudal levies for war against a rival
family; boundary questions and questions of honor
were often settled by duels or pitched battles be-
tween retainers of rival clans.
Corruption pervaded the administrative ap-
paratus from top to bottom. The miserably paid
offi cials prostituted their trusts in innumerable
ways: embezzlement, graft, and bribery were well-
nigh universal. Some improvement, at least on the
higher levels of administration, took place under
the auspices of the extremely able and energetic
marquis de Pombal. The same tendency toward
centralization that characterized Bourbon colo-
nial policy appeared in Portuguese policy in this
period. Pombal abolished the remaining heredi-
tary captaincies, restricted the special privileges of
the municipalities, and increased the power of the
viceroy.
In a mercantilist spirit, Pombaline reforms
sought to promote the economic advance of Bra-
zil with a view to promoting the reconstruction of
Portugal, whose condition was truly forlorn. Typi-
cal of these enlightened viceroys was the marquis
de Lavradio (1769–1779), whose achievements
included the transfer of coffee from Pará into São
Paulo, in whose fertile red soil it was to fl ourish
mightily. The small impact that Pombaline reform
had on Brazil’s administration, however, is sug-
gested by Lavradio’s letter of instructions to his
successor, in which he gloomily observed that
as the salaries of these magistrates [the judges]
are small... they seek to multiply their emolu-
ments by litigation and discord, which they
foment, and not only keep the people unquiet,
but put them to heavy expenses, and divert
them from their occupations, with the end of
promoting their own vile interest and that of
their subalterns, who are the principal con co ct-
ers of these disorders.
During the twelve years he had governed in Brazil,
wrote the viceroy, he had never found one useful es-
tablishment instituted by any of these magistrates.THE CHURCH AND THE STATE
In Brazil, as in the Spanish colonies, church and
state were intimately united. By comparison with
the Spanish monarchs, however, the Portuguese
kings seemed almost niggardly in their dealings
with the church. But their control over its affairs,
exercised through the padroado—the ecclesiastical
patronage granted by the pope to the Portuguese
king in his realm and overseas possessions—was
as absolute. The king exercised his power through
a special board, the Mesa da Consciência e Ordens
(Board of Conscience and Orders). Rome, how-
ever, long maintained a strong indirect infl uence
through the agency of the Jesuits, who were very
infl uential in the Portuguese court until they were
expelled from Portugal and Brazil in 1759.
With some honorable exceptions, notably that
of the entire Jesuit order, the tone of clerical moral-
ity and conduct in Brazil was deplorably low. The
clergy were often criticized for their extortionate
fees and for the negligence they displayed in the
performance of their spiritual duties. Occasionally,
priests combined those duties with more mundane