In 1917, Sidónio Pais, who was at the head of a military junta, dissolved Congress and removed Machado, forcing him to leave the country.

Bernardino Machado was born in Rio de Janeiro, Empire of Brazil, the son of António Luís Machado Guimarães (1820–1882), 1st Baron of Joane and a nobleman of the royal household, a rich merchant raised to the nobility, and his second wife Praxedes de Sousa Guimarães.

[4] Bernardino Machado began in politics from a young age, by the leader of the Regenerator Party, Fontes Pereira de Melo.

During this period he was briefly Minister for Public Works on the Hintze Ribeiro cabinet in 1893, and created the first labour court in Portugal.

[5] In February 1893, Machado joined the first ministry of Hintze Ribeiro, as Minister of Public Works, Commerce and Industry, presenting his resignation in December of that same year.

[5] Machado had an important career as leader of Freemasonry (in the Lodge of Perseverance of the Grand Orient of Portugal, with the symbolic name of "Littré").

On 31 October 1903 he professed his republican faith in a conference given at the Ateneu Comercial in Lisbon, thus marking his formal adherence to the Party.

Afterwards, on 20 January 1912, he was appointed Minister of Portugal in Rio de Janeiro, assuming office in July that year.

Bernardino Machado was called to set up an extrapartisan ministry, in order to appease the heated political sentiments, foreseeing in his program a truce proposal to monarchists, trade unionists and Catholics, to whom he promised a revision of the religious segregation law.