The Library of Congress commemorates this year the 150th anniversary of its establishment by act of the Congress of the United States, and to celebrate this important event in its history has decided to sponsor, with the cooperation of the Institute of Brazilian Studies of Vanderbilt University, an International Colloquium on Luso-Brazilian Studies. This meeting is designed to bring together in Washington, October 18–21, distinguished specialists in various aspects of Luso-Brazilian culture, not only from Brazil, Portugal and the United States, but also from other countries.

When the Editors of THE AMERICAS invited me to write an article for this issue of their journal and thus join with them in honoring the International Colloquium on Luso-Brazilian Studies, it occurred to me to say something about Salvador Correia de Sá e Benavides. Could anything be more appropriate for such an occasion, I thought, than to touch upon the activities of a man whose life was intimately connected with Portugal, Brazil and Angola? Surely no other figure out of the common past of the Portuguese-speaking countries more nearly symbolizes their basic unities and, to a certain extent even today, their interdependence. The pages that follow will not directly bring this out, because my purpose was simply to present the facts that have been available to me. But the reader will be in a position to draw his own conclusions, and these, I believe, will bear out what I have suggested above.

Hipólito da Costa would probably be quite content (perhaps even a little surprised) at being feted as the father of the Brazilian press and probably he would not demand the additional title of political philosopher. But, in the fashion of his age, he discoursed at length on politics, and the pages of the Correio Braziliense which he edited show the ideas on governmental theory of a particular, early nineteenth-century liberal, a Portuguese influenced by the English liberalism which seems so far from radical today as to be almost blatantly conservative.

No Chapter in Brazilian history has received more attention or is better known in all its details than the story of the “Inconfidência Mineira.” Nor has any theme been the subject of more partisan study or greater disagreement.

Innumerable documents pertaining to the topic have long been known and studied, discussed and published, both in Brazil and Portugal. These range from the correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and José Joaquim da Maia, to the work known as “The Last Moments of Tiradentes, by the friar who assisted him as confessor,” attributed to Frei Raimundo de Penaforte. In Brazil alone we may refer to the seven volumes of the “Autos de Devassas da Inconfidência” in the Arquivo Público; the two large volumes of the Manuscript Division of the Biblioteca Nacional; the documents in the Historical Section of the Arquivo Público, and those in the Arquivo Público of Minas Gerais. There are many published documents to be found scattered throughout journals and reviews, such as the documents edited by Melo Morais in Brasil Histórico, by Barão Homem de Melo in the Revista do Instituto Histórico Brasileiro, by Melo de Moares Filho in the Arquivo do Distrito Federal, and many others. Many eminent historians, from Joaquim Norberto de Sousa e Silva to Lúcio José dos Santos, have given to the matter their most careful attention.