Accusação desenvolvida no Tribunal do Jury do Rio de Janeiro contra os réos pronunciados pelo assassinato do Coronel Gentil José de Castro.

Rio de Janeiro, Companhia Typographica do Brasil, 1898.. FIRST and ONLY EDITION. 8°, original beige printed wrappers (minor stains and soiling). Light foxing. Overall in very good condition. (3 ll.), 35 pp. *** FIRST and ONLY EDITION. Colonel Gentil José de Castro, owner of two monarchist newspapers, was shot to death on a railway platform in March 1897. In this speech to the jurors who were to pass judgment on those who assassinated Castro, Mesquita attempts to discount all the reasons that might incline them toward leniency, e.g., that the murder was the result of the madness of a crowd rather than individuals, or that the political situation at the time excused the action. In a substantial section (pp. 25-32), he discusses the relationship between the assassination and the Canudos rebellion. In the course of the speech, Mesquita cites Darwin's Descent of Man (p. 11), Italian criminologist Scipio Sighele (p. 17), and Conde Afonso Celso's account of the assassination (p. 26). Brazil's republican government, established in 1889 after a military coup deposed D. Pedro II, had been struggling since 1896 to suppress the rebellion at Canudos, in the poverty-stricken backlands of Bahia. The leader of the rebellion was Antonio Conselheiro, a mystic who predicted the return of D. Sebastião of Portugal. In 1893 he and thousands of followers settled in the sertões, where Capuchins accused them of plotting a monarchical uprising. Soon a local government official called for military aid. Due to over-confidence and bad planning, successively larger military expeditions were defeated by the residents of Canudos. The rebellion became a serious embarrassment to the republican government, and diehard monarchists such as Gentil José de Castro were accused of supporting the rebels. On March 7, 1897, demonstrators broke into the offices of Castro's Gazeta da Liberdade and Gazeta da Tarde in Rio de Janeiro, smashing the presses and destroying the printed material. The next day, ignoring the advice of anxious friends, Castro came to Rio to survey the damage. As he was about to board the train back to Petropolis, he was shot dead.The assassination was witnessed by 2 fellow monarchists, the Visconde de Ouro Preto (Afonso Celso de Assis Figueiredo) and his son, Conde Afonso Celso (Afonso Celso de Assis Figueiredo Júnior). A month later, feeling against the monarchists was still so strong that the two fled the country. Later that year, Celso published in Paris his account of Castro's death: Assassinato do coronel Gentil José de Castro.Elpidio Pereira de Mesquita, a native of Bahia, studied at Recife and became a lawyer. He was elected deputy to the legislature in the Empire. By the time he published this work, Antonio Conselheiro had died and the Canudos rebellion had been brutally suppressed (October 1897).*** On the author, see Sacramento Blake II, 268. Not located in Porbase. Not located in Jisc.