Ferreira de Freitas (Joaquim José)

All of Joaquim José Ferreira de Freitas’s biographers state that he was born in Madeira, but every effort made by the late Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) Freitas e Abreu and by the present author to discover the parish (freguesia) of his birth, or any other personal circumstances of interest to his biography, has proved fruitless. We suppose that he left this island at an early age, perhaps to pursue studies that could not be undertaken in Funchal in that setting and at that time. We also suspect that he never returned to his native soil, which is easily explained by the eventful life he led across Europe.

In the history of the political upheavals that our country went through in the turbulent period from 1820 to 1834, Ferreira de Freitas became known as Padre Amaro, although he was not a priest. The name came from a periodical of that strange title which he published in London; it enjoyed a European reputation, and it was there above all that he displayed his great gifts as a writer.

A restless and adventurous spirit, we see him travel the length and breadth of Europe: now fighting in Napoleon’s armies, now the confidant of Joseph Bonaparte; here a merchant and manufacturer, there a supplier of provisions to the troops; one day the director of a reading room in Paris, and the next the distinguished and vigorous journalist and pamphleteer who rendered such notable services in London to the cause of Portuguese liberty.

All agree that Ferreira de Freitas would have left a great name in the literary history of our country had his life passed serenely and quietly in the calm of a study, devoted to reflection and learning. Instead, he led an extremely eventful existence of struggles and passions, of hatreds and despair, with strokes of fortune and also the distressing ordeals of poverty. The glaring inconsistencies and contradictions of his character contributed greatly to this, for unfortunately it did not always allow itself to be guided by the rules of the strictest probity or by the most impartial principles of justice.

Meanwhile, besides his vast and brilliant work as a journalist, he wrote several volumes that are incontestable evidence of his prodigious talent and his rare qualities as a writer. In 1822 he published in London the Memória sobre a conspiração de Gomes Freire, in which he seeks to clear Marshal Beresford of the responsibility attributed to him for the death of the Portuguese general. For this work Ferreira de Freitas is said to have received the sum of 300 pounds, which was a considerable amount for the time. Shortly afterwards he published the Coup d'oeil sur l'état politique du Brésil. When he was contradicted by the distinguished French writer Afonso de Bauchamp in the work entitled Historia do Brasil, Ferreira de Freitas replied with such spirit and wealth of argument that he earned the praise of his opponent himself. He undertook the publication of a larger work entitled Bibliotheca Histórica, Política e Diplomatica da Nação Portuguesa, of which only the first volume appeared, in London, in 1830. Attacking the distinguished jurist Ferreira Borges, he wrote the pamphlet O Bota-Fora do catavento ou a cabeça de bacalhau fresco, which has been attributed to Garrett; the prose and verse compositions it contains would not shame the author of Fr. Luiz de Sousa. He wrote various pieces in Portuguese, French and English, intended chiefly to promote the independence of Brazil and later the establishment of constitutional government in Portugal.

He worked tirelessly as a journalist and pamphleteer almost until his death, which came in London on 20 July 1831, when he was little more than 50 years old. The costs of his funeral were paid by the wealthy Madeiran, his fellow countryman and friend, the 1st Count of Carvalhal (‘oak grove’), who was then living in exile in that capital.