tep to emancipate Brazil,
opening its ports to foreign commerce, and permitting the export of all
Brazilian produce under any flag, the royal monopolies of diamonds and
Brazil-wood excepted. Once established in Rio de Janeiro, the government
of the regent was directed to the creation of an administrative
machinery for the dominions that remained to him as it existed in
Portugal. Besides the ministry which had come with the regent, the
council of state, and the departments of the four ministries of home,
finances, war and marine then existing, there were created in the course
of one year a supreme court of justice, a board of patronage and
administration of the property of the church and military orders, an
inferior court of appeal, the court of exchequer and royal treasury, the
royal mint, bank of Brazil, royal printing-office, powder-mills on a
large scale, and a supreme military court. The maintenance of the court,
and the salaries of so large a number of high officials, entailed the
imposition of new taxes to meet these expenses. Notwithstanding this the
expenses continued to augment, and the government had recourse to the
reprehensible measure of altering the money standard, and the whole
monetary system was soon thrown into the greatest confusion. The bank,
in addition to its private functions, farmed many of the _regalia_, and
was in the practice of advancing large sums to the state, transactions
which gave rise to extensive corruption, and terminated some years later
in the breaking of the bank.

Thus the government of the prince regent began its career in the new
world with dangerous errors in the financial system; yet the increased
activity which a multitude of new customers and the increase of
circulating medium gave to the trade of Rio, added a new stimulus to the
industry of the whole nation. Numbers of English artisans and
shipbuilders, Swedish iron-founders, German engineers and French
manufacturers sought fortunes in the new country, and diffused industry
by their example.

In the beginning of 1809, in retaliation for the occupation of Portugal,
an expedition was sent from Para to the French colony of Guiana, and
after some fighting this part of Guiana was incorporated with Brazil.
This conquest was, however, of short duration; for, by the treaty of
Vienna in 1815, the colony was restored to France. Its occupation
contributed to the improvement of agriculture in Brazil; it had been the
policy of Portuga