But it was soon represented to the King of Portugal that if such plenty of diamonds should be met with, as their sanguine conjectures seemed to indicate, this would so debase their value and diminish their estimation, that besides ruining all the Europeans who had any quantity of Indian diamonds in their possession, it would render the discovery itself of no importance, and would prevent his majesty from receiving any advantages from it, and on these considerations his majesty has thought proper to restrain the general search of diamonds, and has erected a diamond company for that {56} purpose, with an exclusive charter. This company, in consideration of a sum paid to the king, is vested with the property of all diamonds found in Brazil: but to hinder their collecting too large quantities, and thereby reducing their value, they are prohibited from employing above eight hundred slaves in searching after them. And to prevent any of his other subjects from acting the same part, and likewise to secure the company from being defrauded by the interfering of interlopers in their trade and property, he has depopulated a large town and a considerable district round it, and has obliged the inhabitants, who are said to amount to six thousand, to remove to another part of the country; for this town being in the neighbourhood of the diamonds, it was thought impossible to prevent such a number of people who were on the spot from frequently smuggling. In consequence of these important discoveries in Brazil, new laws, new governments, and new regulations have been established in many parts of the country. For not long since a considerable tract, possessed by a set of inhabitants who from their principal settlement were called Paulists, was almost independent of the crown of Portugal, to which it scarcely acknowledged more than a nominal allegiance. These Paulists are said to be descendants of those Portuguese who retired from the northern part of Brazil when it was invaded and possessed by the Dutch. As from the confusion of the times they were long neglected by their superiors, and were obliged to provide for their own security and defence, the necessity of their affairs produced a kind of government amongst them which they found sufficient for the confined manner of life to which they were inured. And being thus habituated to their own regulations, they at length grew fond of their independency: so that rejecting and despising the mandates of the court of Lisbon, they were often engaged in a state of downright rebellion, and the mountains surrounding their country, and the difficulty of clearing the few passages that open into it, generally put it in their power to make their own terms before they submitted. But as gold was found to abound in this country of the Paulists, the present King of Portugal (during whose reign almost the whole discoveries I have mentioned were begun and compleated) thought it incumbent on him to reduce this province,