Note 49 — V.

The modern Brazilian system of Parceria may be shortly stated as that by which a planter engages in Europe such of the poorer classes as are desirous of emigrating, and has them transported at his own cost to Brazil, where they are engaged as farmers, with half profits, upon the coffee and sugar plantations, and contracting to reimburse him, by their personal services and labour, for the outlay he has been at for their transport, maintenance, instruction, &c. Until all these have been repaid by the improvement in the rent or productive powers of the land, they must remain, as working out their emancipation from the lord of the soil, veritable "adscripti glebæ." After that has been attained they are free people, and may leave if they please, or may sink into the rank of "unattached labourers," which implies their assigning half of the net produce of the land to the ground landlord, the remaining half being their remuneration for labour. Proprietorship in the soil is never attainable by these farmers on half profits, inasmuch as the Parceria system can only exist where the soil is already exclusively vested in a planting aristocracy. (See Handelmann, etc., p. 568).