Brazil at the Dawn of the Eighteenth Century

Chapter X: How the Planter Should Act in Directing His Family and Ordinary Household Expenses

45 chapter x y How the Planter Should Act in Directing His Family and Ordinary Household Expenses Since the structure of a plantation demands such vast expenses as we have explained above, it can easily be seen how much economy is necessary in managing the household. More good horses than are necessary, fancy musicians, trumpeters, instrumentalists, and pampered lackeys do not help to increase wealth but only to diminish it with debts and mortgages. Still less useful are continual amusements and superfluous banquets, the festive clothes, the elaborate sedan chairs, and gambling. By these paths, in a few years some wealthy planters find themselves reduced to the status of poor and miserable tenants, unable to find dowries for their daughters or any honest means to assist their sons. It is bad to be called a penny-pincher, but it is no praiseworthy thing to be called a spendthrift. He who is resolved to lead a planter’s laborious life must retire from the city and escape the civic duties that would distract him. On the other hand, he could maintain two homes, with double expenses, and with marked detriment to the one from which he is unavoidably absent. If he keeps his sons always with him on the plantation, they are liable to grow up as country bumpkins. They will have no subjects of conversation in society other than dogs, horses, and oxen. If they are left alone in the city, this gives them the freedom to court vice and contract shameful diseases that cannot be cured easily. In order, therefore, to avoid these two extremes, the best thing to do is to put them in the house of some honorable and respectable relative or friend where they will not have the opportunity of being led astray. This guardian will be glad to keep an eye on them, and give completely reliable information about their good or poor behavior, and their progress or negligence in study. The planter should not allow his wife to send them money or to secretly order his bookkeeper or agent 46 The Cultivation of Sugar in the city to do so. Nor should he always believe that when they ask for money to buy books, it might not also be for gambling. For this reason, he should instruct the attorney or the merchant who acts as his agent not to give them anything without his order. They will be very clever in inventing all sorts of specious pretexts and convincing reasons when asking for money. This is especially true when they are already following a course of study and want to enjoy a good life for three years at the expense of their father or uncle, who remains on his estate and does not know what is happening in the city. When these fathers or uncles boast in conversation of having an Aristotle in the lecture room, it may well be that they have an Asínio or an Aprício in the market place.28 However , the planter may decide to keep his sons at home on the plantation, and be satisfied with their learning reading, writing, and arithmetic, and gathering some notions of history and current affairs. This will allow them to converse in society. If he does this, the father should not neglect to watch them closely as they grow older. The open countryside is likewise a place of great freedom that nonetheless contains rocks and thorns. If oxen and horses are fenced in so that they cannot stray beyond the pasture, what is wrong in placing some restrictions on the sons, whether inside or outside the house? Experience shows this to be necessary. This is good as long as the father’s circumspection is prudent and not overly strict, which may encourage malice. The best example, however, is the good behavior of the parents. The surest way of obtaining peace of mind is to marry off both daughters and sons at the proper time. If the parents will be contented with equal marriages, there is no shortage of families with whom they can make suitable exchanges and receive benefits in return. ...