Note 52 — Chapter IX · RIO JANEIRO, CAPITAL OF BRAZIL.

Since my return these anticipations have been to a considerable extent realized; for previous to the close of the last session the chambers passed a law, conferring power on the imperial government to alter a great variety of duties in the Brazilian tariff, effecting a reduction on the principal articles of import from England of from 25 to 30 per cent. Though the extremely flourishing state of the imperial revenue has admitted of this improvement without any serious sacrifice, even for the moment, it must also be attributed in a great degree to the progress of a knowledge of sound commercial policy, not only among the discerning men to whom the administration is committed, but among the representatives by whose support alone they are able to carry out such judicious views. It will be seen, also, that other portions of the South American continent, both on the West and the East coast, have acted in a like spirit; and now that the vast internal streams are opening to the tide of European commerce and civilization, there begins to loom in the not distant future the certainty of those magnificent conceptions of Mr. Canning being realized, when he spoke of calling into political being these states of the new world to redress the balance of the old.