Portuguese diplomatist, born at Ponte de Lima on the 14th of May 1754; died at Rio Janeiro on the 21st of June 1817. He was an accomplished man of letters and science, devoted to efforts for the internal improvement of his country. He founded an Economical Society of Friends of the Public Good; became an early member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Lisbon; joined in a project to render the river Lima navigable, and in another to aid the silk industry by the extensive planting of mulberry trees, besides introducing some textile manufactures into Portugal; appointed ambassador to The Hague in 1787; in 1797 he negotiated a treaty with France, which was afterward annulled, through pique at delay on the part of the Lisbon government in its ratification; in 1802 he was named Portuguese minister at St. Petersburg, and in 1803 became secretary of state in the cabinet at Lisbon. In 1808, after the capture of Lisbon by the French, he accompanied the king to Brazil, where he established botanic gardens, a school of chemistry, a printing-press and other civilizing institutions. He became minister of marine and the colonies in 1814, prime minister in 1817, and was created Count of Barca in 1815. Among his literary works are Portuguese translations of Horace’s Odes, Gray’s Elegy, and Dryden’s Saint Cecilia’s Day.
