the reasonable expectation, that, out of
the abundant wealth that he had gained for Brazil, he himself should
receive his lawful share of the prize-money gained by his exertions.
Instead of that he and his subordinates, both officers and men, were
subjected to an unparalleled course of meanness, trickery, and fraud.

This partly resulted from an unfortunate change in the Government that
had occurred during his absence. When he left Rio de Janeiro, Pedro
I.'s chief secretary of state had been Don Jose Bonifacio de Andrada
y Silva, a wise and patriotic Brazilian. The Emperor and his minister
had all along been seriously crippled in fulfilment of their good
purposes by subordinates of the Portuguese faction, who persistently
twisted their instructions, when they did not act in direct
opposition to those instructions, so as to promote their own and their
countrymen's selfish and unpatriotic objects; but there had been hope
that the zeal of Pedro and Jose de Andrada would overcome these evil
devices, and secure the healthy consolidation of the empire. When Lord
Cochrane returned, however, he found that the honest minister had
been deposed, that his party had been ousted, and that the Emperor was
surrounded by bad counsellors, who, unable to pervert his judgment,
were strong enough to restrain its action, and who were robbing him,
one by one, of all his constitutional functions, and doing their
best to bring Brazil into a state of anarchy, with a view to the
re-establishment of Portuguese authority in its old or in some new but
no less obnoxious form. The Emperor, desiring to do well, had hardly
improved his position, a few days before the _Pedro Primiero's_
arrival, by violently dissolving the Legislative Assembly, banishing
some of its members, and threatening to place Rio de Janeiro itself
under military law.

That was the state of affairs when Lord Cochrane entered the port.
Only five days afterwards, on the 14th of November, 1823, he wrote a
bold letter to the Emperor. "My sense of the impropriety of intruding
myself on the attention of your Imperial Majesty on any subject
unconnected with the official position with which your Majesty has
been pleased to honour me," he said, "could only have been overcome by
an irresistible desire, under existing circumstances, to contribute to
the service of your Majesty, and the empire. The conduct of the late
Legislative Assembly, which sought to derogate from the dignity and
prerog