The present article examines the creation and development of São Paulo Provincial General Council during the First Empire of Brazil. As outlined in the Brazilian Constitution of 1824, the organ had functions that can be viewed as an embryonic provincial legislative power, and was actually established in the Province of São Paulo by 1828, when the government of Dom Pedro I was already becoming exhausted. The main focus of the present analysis is the significance of the Council's existence in the midst of the centrifugal and centripetal dynamics acting during the creation of Brazil's first independent state.
legislative; order; autonomy