the court of requests, and so many
other recent establishments, which promised such future advantage? Where
now shall the wretched people resort in behalf of their civil and
judicial interests? Must they now again, after being for twelve years
accustomed to judgment at hand, go and suffer, like petty colonists, the
delays and chicanery of the tribunals of Lisbon, across two thousand
leagues of ocean, where the sighs of the oppressed lose all life and all
hope? Who would credit it, after so many bland, but deceitful
expressions of reciprocal equality and future happiness!!!

"In the session of the 6th of August last, the deputy of the Cortes,
Pereira do Carmo, said, (and he spoke the truth,) that the constitution
was the social compact, in which, were expressed and declared the
conditions on which a nation might wish to constitute itself a body
politic: and that the end of that constitution, is the general good of
each individual, who is to enter into that social compact. How then
dares a mere fraction of the great Portuguese nation, without waiting
for the conclusion of this solemn national compact, attack the general
good of the principal part of the same, and such is the vast and rich
kingdom of Brazil; dividing it into miserable fragments, and, in a word,
attempting to tear from its bosom the representative of the executive
power, and to annihilate by a stroke of the pen, all the tribunals and
establishments necessary to its existence and future prosperity? This
unheard-of despotism, this horrible political perjury, was certainly not
merited by the good and generous Brazil. But the enemies of order in the
Cortes of Lisbon deceive themselves if they imagine that they can thus,
by vain words and hollow professions, delude the good sense of the
worthy Portuguese of both worlds.

"Your Royal Highness will observe that, if the kingdom of Ireland,
which makes part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, besides that it
is infinitely small compared to the vast kingdom of Brazil, and is
separated from England but by a narrow arm of the sea, which is passed
in a few hours, yet possesses a governor-general or viceroy, who
represents the executive power of the King of the United Kingdom, how
can it enter the head of any one who is not either profoundly ignorant,
or rashly inconsiderate, to pretend, that the vast kingdom of Brazil,
should remain without a centre of activity, and without a representative
of the executive power: