English and
French consuls to induce me to give further time for consideration. This
I refused, from the dangerous nature of the anchorage, by which the
safety of the ships was imperilled.

Unwilling, however, to injure this fine city, I sent in proposals for
capitulation, giving permission to the revolutionary leaders to depart
unpunished, together with their property, provided they quitted the
Brazilian territory--demanding in return the surrender of the forts,
ships of war, gunboats, &c. as well as of all public property. In order
to prevent waste of time in correspondence, I proposed to Carvalho to
meet me on board any neutral ship of war, pledging my honour as to his
being permitted to return in safety; he nevertheless declined the
interview, proposing in return to meet me on shore on an island near the
town but--as after his insulting proposal, I could have no confidence in
his honour, this was of course declined.

Still anxious to avoid extremities--from which, after the threats made,
I could not consistently refrain--I again wrote to Carvalho, that, had
he possessed the means of distinguishing between the intentions of the
Emperor, and the proceedings of a foreign faction, he would not have
been in arms against His Imperial Majesty, by adherence to whom Brazil
could alone be saved from that anarchy and confusion into which Mexico
and other South American States had fallen through individual rivalry
and the ignorance of their popular assemblies. I further pointed out to
him, that if, by procrastination I was compelled to bombard the city,
the popular clamour against the insurgent authorities might be followed
by melancholy proof to himself how quickly political adventurers may be
abandoned or betrayed in the hour of danger, and that he had better
yield to reason, what he could not prevent my effecting by force.

By writers who could not have known anything of the circumstances--which
exist only in my own documents--I have been blamed for this tone of
moderation towards the revolutionary President. There were two valid
reasons for this course; first, that the conduct of the Pernambucans
admitted of great palliation, seeing that the distractions resulting
from the Portuguese faction in the administration at Rio de Janeiro had
been ignorantly construed into acts of His Imperial Majesty--so that the
injured people argued that it would have been better for them to have
remained a colony of Portugal, than a colony of