three candidates in a given province) and also influenced the Judiciary, by appointing (for life) the members of the Highest Court. This constitution established the Brazilian Empire as a Unitary state (the provinces had little autonomy, if any). The Amendment (Ato Adicional) of August 12, 1834, enacted in a period of liberal reform, authorized the provinces to create their own legislative chambers, which were empowered to legislate on financial matters, create taxes and their own corps of civil servants under a chief executive nominated by the central power; it was however revised by an "interpretive" act of May 1840, enacted in a period of conservative reaction, which allowed the central power to appoint judges and police officers in the provinces. On July 20, 1847, a Decree (number 523) established the post of Prime Minister, formally titled "president of the Council of Ministers" (not to be confused with the State Council, whose ten members sat for life and which in the late Empire functioned solely as an advising body to the Emperor). Appointed by the emperor, the Prime Minister then chose a cabinet of state secretaries, or ministers. The cabinet had to maintain the support of a majority in the General Assembly. The emperor's acts were not valid without the countersignature of the minister responsible for the issue concerned. The 1847 decree thus turned the Brazilian Empire into a standard constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. The franchise was very limited, being censitary and indirect: no male citizen who was not head of a household and/or had a net yearly income of less than a hundred milréis was allowed to vote in the primary elections that chose actual electors, empowered with the right to vote for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. As a result, Brazilian legislatures had a decided conservative slant. Combined with widespread electoral frauds, no Prime Minister chosen by the Emperor – who had the power to order the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies and new elections to it – ever failed to win a parliamentary majority in subsequent elections. The Constitution of 1824, enacted in the name of the Holy Trinity, also instituted Catholicism as the state religion, allowing other religions to be practiced only in private: non-Catholic places of worship could not be fashioned to appear as religious buildings from the outside. It also excluded slaves from Brazilian citizenship, by extending it to all