He and his party's stalwart and unconditional defence of constitutional order allowed the country to move beyond a regency plagued by factious disputes and rebellions that might easily have led to a dictatorship.

Appointed president of Rio de Janeiro Province in 1841, Paraná helped put down a rebellion headed by the opposition Liberal Party the following year.

Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão was born on 11 January 1801, in the freguesia (civil parish) of São Carlos do Jacuí, Minas Gerais, then a captaincy (later province) of the Portuguese colony of Brazil.

[1] Named after Saint Honorata, Honório Hermeto was the son of Antônio Neto Carneiro Leão and Joana Severina Augusta de Lemos.

[5] Honório Hermeto first lived in Paracatu, then moved to Vila Rica (now Ouro Preto), at that time the capital of Minas Gerais, where he spent his childhood and adolescence.

[6][8] Honório Hermeto had an elder sister, Balbina, and three half-sisters and a half-brother, Nicolau Neto Carneiro Leão (later Baron of Santa Maria), from his father's second marriage.

[10] Antônio Neto made great efforts to provide Honório Hermeto with an education of much higher quality than would normally have been expected in a family of their limited financial means.

[1] The promotion to captain in 1819 increased Antônio Neto's income, allowing his eldest son to go to Portugal and enroll in the University of Coimbra's law school in 1820, thus ending Honório Hermeto's brief military career.

[15] Honório Hermeto was a member of a secret society called A Gruta (The Den), founded by Brazilian students at Coimbra with the primary goal of changing Brazil from a monarchy into a republic.

[17] He returned to Brazil on 8 August 1825 aboard a ship with other Coimbra graduates, among them Aureliano Coutinho and Joaquim Rodrigues Torres (who would later found the Conservative Party with Honório Hermeto and become the Viscount of Itaboraí).

[26] Honório Hermeto pursued a typical course open to 19th century Brazilians who became affluent through family connections and patronage: a judicial career, with expectations of entering politics.

[28] On 25 August 1828, Honório Hermeto left São Paulo upon being promoted to the post of auditor da marinha (admiralty judge) in Rio de Janeiro, the imperial capital located in the province of same name.

Vasconcelos mounted a challenge to Honório Hermeto's position among his constituency, and by circulating rumors that the latter had links to the uprising, undercut his reputation at home and in the Chamber of Deputies.

[61] They began to see their interests more in alignment with men like Honório Hermeto, who were planters like themselves—people who supported the slave trade with Africa and desired a centralized state able to impose order.

[63][61] Feijó resigned in August 1837 and Pedro de Araújo Lima (later the Marquis of Olinda), a Reactionary from Pernambuco Province, became interim regent and was elected to the office the next year.

[91] Having already secured two lifetime positions (councillor and senator), on 4 October 1841 Honório Hermeto received an appointment as president (governor) of the province of Rio de Janeiro, and assumed this office on 1 December.

[94] He joined forces there with Luís Alves de Lima e Silva (then-Baron and later Duke of Caxias), who commanded the National Guard of São Paulo and Minas Gerais and was also married to one of Honório Hermeto's distant cousins.

As Honório Hermeto returned from Minas Gerais to Rio de Janeiro, he was welcomed with celebrations and demonstrations of joy by the authorities and populace of the districts he traversed.

[117] The rise of the saquaremas ensured a purge of Liberals who had been appointed to executive and judicial posts at the national, provincial and local levels, as was normal when a new party was tapped to form a government.

The most radical Liberal faction in the province of Pernambuco, known as the Partido da Praia (Beach Party), made open preparations to revolt and retake power by force.

[118][119] Honório Hermeto was appointed president of the province, from 2 July 1849 until 8 May 1850, with the purpose of pacification by restraining acts of revenge and throwing his support behind fair trials for all rebels.

[114] As Brazil had been pacified after the end of the last rebellion (the Praieira revolt), the country's government turned its attention to the growing tensions with its neighbor to the south, the Argentine Confederation.

Paulino Soares, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, decided to forge alliances with Uruguay and Paraguay, nations which also saw a threat in the ambitions of Juan Manuel de Rosas, dictator of the Argentine Confederation.

The title was derived from the Paraná River, a tributary of the Río de la Plata, upon which free passage rights for Brazilian shipping was secured after Rosas' downfall.

[155] Paraná succeeded because, as founder and leader of the Conservative Party, he "had enormous charisma and a broad personal clientele in the Chamber" and "could (and did) dispense power, prestige, and patronage.

At the end of August 1856, enraged by an offensive speech by Pedro de Araújo Lima, Marquis of Olinda (former regent in the late 1830s) in the Senate, Paraná rose to respond.

According to Needell, "Paraná might well have seen the cabinet and its victory as his personal vindication before the party rivals and his monarch, his political triumph after the dismissal of 1844 and the second-rank status and saquarema disrespect of 1850.

[168] Writer Joaquim Manuel de Macedo said that "the marquis of Paraná was a politician well suited to the great State crises, and to a time of most difficult and contentious political strife.

His policy of conciliation ended a period of rebellions, and led to the appearance of a new generation of monarchist politicians raised "in the school of tolerance, mutual respect and public interest"; which produced "the constitutional environment where the two great [political] parties of the Monarchy would take turns [in power] without excluding each other.

[177] "Of all politicians of imperial Brazil, it is without a doubt," said historian Hélio Viana, "Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná, the one who deserves to be called statesman".