effective, and since it is not in the Latin nature to be satisfied with gradual improvement, the liberal movement, of which the electoral law was a symptom, swept on with increasing violence until the beneficent law was uprooted along with the mistaken system on which it had been painfully grafted. As soon as electoral reform was out of the way abolition became once more the dominant question in Brazilian politics. Though the majority of Liberals were abolitionists and the doctrine was one of the official principles of the party, the various Liberal Cabinets which succeeded each other from 1881 to 1884 managed to dodge the dangerous issue. Finally the Dantas ministry faced it squarely. A bill was introduced prohibiting the sale of slaves, establishing an emancipation fund, and freeing slaves as fast as they reached the age of sixty. A terrific parliamentary battle followed and the project was defeated by only seven votes--forty-eight Liberals and four Conservatives voting for it, and seventeen Liberals and forty-two Conservatives against. The Emperor dissolved the Chamber and the excitement over abolition became national. The abolitionists subsidised newspapers, held public meetings, and marched through the streets in procession carrying pictures representing the torturing of slaves. No means were spared which might aid to rouse the national conscience. The negroes were advised to revolt, and assistance was openly promised to them. The elections of 1884 were violently contested, instead of being free from fraud and protest like those of 1881. Nor did the government so conscientiously abstain from interference. Nevertheless the Chamber elected did not differ materially in its composition from that which had preceded it. Sixty-five of the one hundred and twenty members of the new House were Liberals, but of these fifteen were opposed to abolition. For the first time avowed republican members were elected--three being returned, and two of them came from Sao Paulo--Prudente Moraes and Campos Salles, the first two Brazilians to hold office avowedly as republicans and who reaped their reward by becoming two decades later the first two civil presidents of the republic. No election was ever held in Brazil which was so earnestly contested and which constituted so genuine an expression of the wishes of the people. Nevertheless, on the main question--that of abolition--the result was apparently a drawn battle.