A secret meeting in March 1787 between a Brazilian revolutionary and Thomas Jefferson, United States minister to France, in Nîmes, has been little noticed by historians.
The Brazilian, Dr José Barbalho Da Maia, who is studying medicine in Montpellier, tells Jefferson that potential insurgents in Brazil have a war chest of twenty-six million dollars promised from secret backers and asks if the United States will support them.
Jefferson tells him that his personal view is that ‘… we were not in a condition at present to meddle nationally in any war, yet a successful revolution in Brazil could not be uninteresting to us’.
Jefferson reports the conversation to Congress through John Jay, the New York lawyer and politician.
In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson writes, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them.
An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much.
It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of the government.”