From 1808 to 1837 the tendency had been in the direction of democracy and decentralisation. Then the tide turned and from 1837 to the Paraguayan war the central government grew stronger and federalism weaker. The power of the Emperor reached its apogee in 1870. The senators had been personally selected by him and he could count on their gratitude and friendship. Deputies were elected indirectly by electors chosen by a suffrage nominally universal, but the elections--primary and secondary--were mere farces, absolutely controlled by the ministry which happened to be in power. The local governors and magistrates, the officers of the national guard, and the police, all dependent on the central government for their positions, formed a machine against which opposition was useless. If intimidation was not sufficient, the baldest frauds were shamelessly resorted to--false polling lists, manufactured returns, and the seating of contestants by the majority in the Chamber or the returning boards. Of this system the Emperor was the real beneficiary, for the Cabinets held at his pleasure, and if the majority of a Chamber did not sustain a ministry which he desired to keep in power, all he had to do was to order a dissolution. But this hybrid system contained in itself the elements of sure decay. The Emperor was no arbitrary despot and neither wished nor would he have been able to govern in complete defiance of public opinion. On the other hand, the system afforded no sure method of ascertaining public opinion nor of throwing a proper responsibility upon well-organised political parties. With the close of the Paraguayan war a series of movements began which ended twenty years later with the overthrow of the empire. Brazil's history during those twenty years is an account of the republican propaganda, the abolition movement, the attempt to reform the elections, the religious agitation, the growth of positivist doctrines, the demand for economic independence by the great provinces, and finally the infiltration of liberalism and insubordination into the army. This evolution, however, affected principally the educated classes. The masses of the people were and still remain largely indifferent to the march of public events.