252 Lectures on Brazilian Affairs
French colonies, sailing ships to France were loaded with the
best Brazilian woods as ballast.
The French treaty was the first of a series of commercial
agreements with the different European countries, the
United States, and the River Plate Republics, 1826-x828.
It was a sort of standardization of our trading regime, and
its economic conditions proved satisfactory for about eighty
years. It was only in 1907 that we started remodelling our
commercial understandings.
The evolution of commerce during the Empire is illus-
trated mostly by successive tariff reforms. Brazil instituted
her first tariff in 1828, under the initiative of Bernardo de
Vasconcellos. Rates were made uniform, with a duty of
15 per cent for all; monopolies were suppressed, commercial
liberty was established. It was a kind of free-trade regime
under liberal principles that were still unknown on the
European Continent.
But that free-trade experiment did not last more than
sixteen years. Protectionism was enforced in 1844, though
the tariff of Alves Branco of that year imposed duties of
only 30 per cent. Two purposes as usual were then in view:
financial help to the State and economic protection for
industry.
It would take too long to describe the plans intended to
be carried out by the half-dozen tariff reforms that followed
1844. There is no doubt that besides the considerations of
revenue, the steady and progressive evolution towards
protectionism, culminating in the 1887 tariff, encouraged
the establishment of industries.
In the first decade of the Empire, importations exceeded
exportations. During the fifties there were oscillations in
the balance, but from 1861 onwards exports rose above
imports with a few annual exceptions.