Crimes, punishments and due process: ideas, texts and individuals travelling across the Atlantic: Brazil and the United States in the 1820s and 1830s

Abstract

In 1830 and 1832 the recently independent Brazilian Empire promulgated its first two codes, a Criminal Code and a Code of Criminal Procedure. Those diplomas duly embraced some then widely spread maxima (dating back to the middle of the 18th century) concerning Penal Laws and Citizen's rights to a fair trial and full defence. In recent studies I was able to illuminate many aspects regarding the said codes, especially the influence of Edward Livingston's oeuvres. But that influence raises new questions, especially why and how Brazilians got copies of his books. All research done until now points to the influence of the Lay Brotherhood in spreading ideas and texts across the Atlantic in the 1820s and 1830s. If, in 1822, masons were forbidden to publicly convene, that does not mean that they've ceased their activities, much to the contrary. Besides that, for the next ten years (after which they would be again authorized to publicly gather), New York freemasons became their most important foreign liaison, in constant contact with the outlawed Brazilian brothers, whose secret lodges were granted charts by the referred North-American State brotherhood. Livingston was not only a New York mason, whose family for years held the most important positions in that State's Brotherhood, but also, from 1829 until his death (in 1836), the supreme authority of the Grand Royal Arch, a kind of superior instance of masonry in the United States.