After Pedro's expulsion the country was left in a very insecure situation. In Rio the Portuguese were as numerous as the native Brazilians. A great part of the population was under arms and radicalism and revolution were in the air; but, for the moment, fear of the Portuguese and of Pedro's restoration enabled cool-headed, conservative leaders to maintain peace. The members of Congress in the city selected a provisional regency. The ministry, whose dismissal had been the occasion of the outbreak against Pedro, returned to power and, so far as Rio was concerned, government proceeded without interruption. Within a few weeks Congress met in regular session, and a permanent regency was elected. Bahia had revolted and expelled the pro-Portuguese military commander even before Pedro's deposition by Rio. When the news of the events of the 7th of April reached Pernambuco and ParÁ the troops promptly renounced their commanders.

In Congress grave differences of opinion appeared. The Brazilian party quickly divided into two factions—the conservatives, who were faithful to the dynasty and wanted the fewest possible changes, and the radicals. The former had stepped into control ahead of the latter, but they had not the real force of the country behind them. There was a growing demand for a larger measure of self-government by the provinces and for sweeping democratic reforms.

The regency had no real prestige, the military soon became jealous and dissatisfied, and the party in favour of the Emperor's restoration began to assume a formidably menacing attitude. In July Rio seemed on the point of plunging into a bloody and desperate civil war. The Regency called upon Padre FeijÓ, the great patriot priest and leader of democratic opinion, and gave him absolute power as minister of justice. His firm measures soon suppressed the disorders in Rio, and the national guard which he organised among the better classes of the people held the revolting regiments in check. In the provinces, however, the local authorities often ignored the commands of the governors appointed by the regency; ambitious local leaders plotted to turn the situation to their personal advantage; and the soldiers and disorderly elements were inflammable material ready to their hands.

In nearly every province civil wars broke out. The typical process was for a military officer, a national-guard colonel, or any other person who had acquired local prestige, to issue a pronunciamento and announce the establishment of a liberal government whose scope was only limited by the imagination and knowledge of constitutional law possessed by the writer of the pronunciamento. If the municipal authorities resisted they were expelled, and creatures of the head of the insurrection put in their places. This overturning of legally existing authority would usually be resented by some neighbouring official or some rival of the petty dictator, and a confused conflict would ensue in which the rank and file of neither side would have a very clear conception of what they were fighting about, although the words of "liberty" and "local rights," "constitutionalism" and "union," were overworked in speeches and proclamations. It is not worth while to give the detailed story of these monotonous and tedious uprisings, massacres, encounters, and usurpations, though the operations often rose to the dignity of campaigns and pitched battles. Hardly a province escaped. In Pernambuco in 1831 the soldiery sacked the city and the people avenged themselves by killing three hundred and banishing the rest. Next year another military revolt broke out in the same city, which soon became an insurrection whose nominal purpose was to restore the Emperor, and which lasted four years. Two hundred persons were killed in ParÁ in 1831 during a single night of street fighting. A bitter little civil war in MaranhÃo lasted all through the winter of 1831-32, and was only put down by a general sent from Rio. In CearÁ the partisans of the Emperor kept the province in a state of anarchy for several months. In Minas Geraes the friends of Pedro obtained possession of the capital, and the patriots had to fight hard to get the better of them. Though most of these insurrections were suppressed by the people of the state concerned, disrespect for the central government was increasing, and a blind and jealous hatred of the Portuguese and everything foreign grew continuously.

During the four stormy years which succeeded Pedro's expulsion, Congress discussed violently the terms of the constitutional revision which all saw to be inevitable. Though the radical elements predominated, the conservatives and the senate succeeded in bringing about a compromise. A single regent was substituted for the triple system; he was to be elected by universal though indirect suffrage; and, most important of all, each province was given its own assembly with power to levy taxes and conduct most of the affairs of local government. The conservatives managed to preserve the life senate and the nomination of the provincial governors by the central government.

The party in favour of Pedro's restoration had been gaining ground. The Andradas, always in the most extreme opposition when out of power, went over to it, and the conservatives were gravitating in the same direction when Pedro's own death in 1834 put an end to the movement. He died at a happy moment for his fame,—covered with the laurels he had just won by driving out his usurping and absolutist brother, Miguel, and by using that opportunity to endow Portugal with a constitution. By a curious irony of fate, this reckless soldier and descendant of a hundred absolute kings was the instrument through which constitutional government was given to both branches of the Portuguese race.

The statesman who had proved himself most nearly master of the situation during these stormy years was Padre FeijÓ. He represented the average Brazilian—the disinterested and honest public. He had energy and intrepidity; his eloquence was peculiar and commanding; his advocacy of his beliefs was uncompromising; he had been a leader in sustaining liberal ideas; and he had proven his practical courage and capacity in putting down the counter-revolution in Rio. He naturally became a candidate for sole regent after the passage of the Acto Addicional, or amendment to the constitution. It seemed appropriate that to him should be entrusted the putting into force of the law which was expected to change Brazil into a federation of democracies united under a constitutional monarchy. Elected after a close contest, he took office in the latter part of 1835, sincerely anxious to rule well and sustained by a popular love and confidence such as few Brazilian statesmen have enjoyed. However, from the beginning he was unable to count on the support of a majority of the Chamber. He was not the man to manage by adroit manipulation and skilful distribution of patronage, but his own work and that of Vasconcellos had borne fruit, and the popular branch of the legislature had become the dominating political force in the Brazilian system. The tide was now setting toward conservatism; the heroic impulses that had brought about the revolution of 1831 had lost their force; the nation's temper was cooled; the politicians had forgotten their fine enthusiasm and were busily engaged in personal intrigues.

FeijÓ inherited from the former regency the two most formidable revolutions which so far had broken out—that of Vinagre and Malcher in ParÁ, and the great rebellion in Rio Grande do Sul. He was hardly fitted to deal with such a complicated situation as that of Brazil in 1836. He himself said: "I am a man to break, never to bend." Though he gave the officeholders of Brazil an object-lesson in unblemished integrity, his actions were often harsh and arbitrary. When on the floor of the Chamber he had been the chief exponent of democracy, but as chief executive he rode roughshod over his inferiors, refused to be guided by others, even in matters where no principle was involved, and proved that he had the true Latin tendency to centralise administration.

Vasconcellos soon outgeneralled FeijÓ. A dread of innovation was spreading among the landholding classes. The merchants and Portuguese of the cities naturally gravitated away from the radical regent. The opposition majority in the Chamber, compactly organised by Vasconcellos's skilful management, was encouraged, feeling that it was backed by the mercantile and office-holding classes, and by the persons of highest intelligence and best social position. It clung together with a cohesion unusual in South America, and was the foundation upon which the historical parties were built whose names are constantly encountered in Brazilian political history for the next fifty years.

For two years FeijÓ struggled against the adverse conditions. For the ParÁ revolution he found a clever and faithful general in Andrea, and managed to keep him well supplied with money and troops, so that a vigorous pursuit of the guerrilla chiefs resulted in their capture and the pacification of the province. But in Rio Grande the people were too strong and too independent to be reduced by troops sent from without, and Congress hampered him by refusing votes of credit. The revolution which had broken out there three months before he assumed the regency had been occasioned by anti-Portuguese feeling and the unpopularity of the governor. The latter was obliged to flee from Porto Alegre with hardly a semblance of resistance. At first FeijÓ wisely limited his interference to the nomination of a new governor. It was not safe to irritate the half-feudal chiefs, backed by their bands of gauchos trained in constant raids over the Uruguayan border and who were too accustomed to seeing revolutions on the Spanish side to hesitate much about undertaking one on their own account. But the new governor was ambitious and tried to take advantage of the jealousies among the gaucho leaders to make himself supreme. He got some of the ablest of them on his side, but the others were stimulated into more determined fighting. The rebels kept the field in formidable numbers, and among their able partisan chiefs was Giuseppe Garibaldi, who here took part in his first war for freedom. At first evil fortune followed the patriots, and they were badly defeated in the battle of Fanfa, where their greatest leader, Bento GonÇalves, was captured and carried to Rio. His lieutenants rallied again and declared Rio Grande an independent republic.

FeijÓ despatched a new governor, whose oppressive measures soon brought about a wholesale desertion by the Rio Grandenses, who had hitherto supported the union side. By the middle of 1837 Rio Grande seemed hopelessly lost to Brazil, and the government only held the coast towns.

His bad management of affairs in Rio Grande was the immediate occasion of FeijÓ's resignation (September, 1837). The victorious conservative majority immediately stepped into power. Bernardo de Vasconcellos reaped at length a personal reward for his years of labour and intrigue, and became the ruling force in the Chamber, and Prime Minister, though a wealthy senator, Araujo Lima by name, had been elected regent. But Vasconcellos was merely the first among equals and held his power only so long as he could command the support of the conservative majority. A sort of oligarchy grew up which directed the work of reaction without much more regard for outside opinion than Pedro himself had shown. However, Brazil had finally entered upon a stage of government which in form was parliamentary and in substance was partly so. It was rather the parliamentarism of Walpole than of Gladstone; the members owed their seats to the administration; they were a sort of self-nominating and self-renewing body; and departmental and judicial administration continued in much the same old way.

The great task before the conservative regency was to undo most of the work which had been wrought by the federalist and democratic movement of the early 30's. The amendments to the constitution, known as the Acto Addicional, had apparently established the autonomy of the provinces in their local affairs. If these amendments had been put into effect, Brazil would have become a federated state like Switzerland or the United States. The conservatives were alarmed at the length to which the provincial assemblies were already going in managing their own affairs, and succeeded in turning the country back on the road toward centralisation and unification. A law was passed which interpreted the Acto Addicional so as nearly to destroy provincial autonomy. The provincial assemblies were forbidden to interfere with the magistracy; their resolutions could be vetoed by the governors or the national Congress; their power of controlling the administration of justice was taken away. They became little more than advisory bodies completely under the dominance of governors appointed from Rio, and who rarely were citizens of the states they ruled. At first there was little opposition, and the regency easily suppressed a separatist movement in Bahia which proposed to establish a republic until the boy emperor should come of age.

The reorganised regency was, however, weak. The attitude of the nation was merely tolerant and expectant. The war in Rio Grande, continued and the attacks of the Liberals in the Chamber increased in force and effectiveness. Ministers began to change and shift; the conviction grew that the conservative oligarchy would not long rule the country. Liberals and conservatives alike inclined to the idea that the best thing was to return to a ruler selected from the legitimate royal family. According to the constitution the boy emperor would not become of age until he reached eighteen, in 1843. If the constitution were strictly followed the country would have to be governed for years by a hybrid executive—a regent who was neither a ruler by popular choice nor yet a monarch by blood and succession. Many advocated declaring the Emperor's eldest sister, Januaria, regent, though the young lady protested tearfully against being turned into such a thing as she imagined a regent to be. More insisted that the Emperor, in spite of his tender years, immediately assume the functions of supreme ruler.

The politicians in opposition, with the two surviving Andradas at their head, took advantage of this feeling. Bills were introduced in Congress authorising the Emperor to take the reins at once. The regent's ministers did not dare directly oppose these measures; they only tried to compromise as long as possible. But difficulties and dissatisfaction increased; a formidable revolution broke out in MaranhÃo; the Rio Grandenses invaded Santa Catharina. It was evident that the regency could not continue to hold the clashing provinces together. While the intellectual conviction had never been stronger that union between the provinces was an advantage, circumstances were increasing dissatisfaction and insubordination in every part of the empire.

The contest in Congress over the Emperor's majority assumed an acute phase as soon as the session of 1840 began. The ministry in desperation sought to prevent immediate action by calling Vasconcellos back to power and proroguing the session. The announcement of this step was followed by an outburst that left no recourse but a submission of the matter in dispute to the boy emperor himself. The opposition deputies went out in a body to see him, and begged him to consent to assume his imperial functions at once. Though entirely unauthorised by the constitution, no one made serious objection to such a revolutionary way of proceeding. The young Pedro accepted with dignity and confidence; the city and country went wild with delight, and on the 23rd of July, 1840, Congress assembled in a sort of extraordinary constituent assembly and without a dissenting voice proclaimed him of age.

Although the ten years of the regency were the stormiest in Brazilian history, they were in many respects the most fruitful. The nation was serving an apprenticeship in governing itself; its public men were being trained; the value of self-restraint and of peace were being learned. The freedom of the press and of parliament was definitely established. The production of literature began; professional schools were put on a footing not unworthy of any civilised country; learned societies were organised; the study of the resources of the country was continued; social intercourse developed; communication between the provinces increased; the study of foreign languages became general among the polite classes.

Industrially, too, the period was one of germination of those seeds from which subsequently grew the prosperity of the country. Though foreign commerce increased little during the civil wars, the cultivation of coffee assumed large proportions, and while sugar and cotton, food crops and tobacco, suffered much from foreign competition and civil disturbances, nevertheless they held up pretty well. The confusion of the times and the weakness of the central government prevented any great improvement in the public finances, but neither taxes nor debt were piled up as they had been under Pedro I. Though the efficiency and honesty of the administration left much to be desired, the small resources of which the central government disposed brought about an era of comparative economy in the departments.