REPRESENTATION, &c. &c. SIRE, T ones. At the end of four years, during which the evils of the nation have been day by day augmenting, it is now time that your Majesty should listen to another voice than that of the counsellors who have hitherto guided your proceedings. Convinced that there cannot be made to the nation and to your Majesty a gift so valuable as that of exposing, without any disguise, the true causes of so many disasters, I am emboldened to address to your Royal Person this letter, in which I shall endeavour, with the utmost respect, but with all requisite firmness, to point out the principal One moment, Sire, undisturbed by the poisonous influence of counsellors, who, perverting the names of things, soften into trivial weaknesses crimes of the first magnitude, and designate as atrocious faults virtues of the purest patriotism, will suffice, to satisfy your Majesty of the necessity of redressing them. One moment may be sufficient for your Majesty, trusting to the conduct of your own reason, the only guide not interested in deceiving you, to convince yourself of the importance of my exposition; and to induce you to listen with condescension, to the only language fitted to restore your blemished fame, and to save your political existence-to free the Spanish people from the evils which oppress them-and to raise the nation to that rank, which, well governed, it ought to hold. I am persuaded that your Majesty will accede to my respectful prayer, since it is the lowest stage of depravity to hate truth, spoken without sarcasm or satire; and more so when it has for its object the happiness of millions of oppressed beings, and the defence of thousands of victims, condemned without trial, or without time, liberty, or means of proving the justice of their cause. I shall use, Sire, in this case, the privilege of speaking the truth, although it may be insulted by your advisers with the title of sedition, and with other opprobrium of like nature. That prince, says a philosopher, ought not to reign, who is ignorant of these three things,-to exercise his authority in conformity to the dictates of wise laws-to administer with impartiality justice to all his subjects—and, by himself, or by his generals, to make war on foreign foes. The book of Wisdom, the assertions of which it is not permitted us to doubt, conformably with these same principles, assures us, that if the prince administer, as he ought, justice to his people, they shall live in peace and contented, and he shall be loaded with blessings. In a nation governed by a virtuous king, the obedience of the subjects is always cordial, and even without bounds; and the respect due to the high dignity of the monarch then becomes a real attachment to his person. It would be a phenomenon, unknown in the history of mankind, to see a people discontented, and engaged in continual insurrections against a just and well-conducted prince. Admitting these irrefragable truths, how terrible, Sire, is the consequence which springs from reflection on the widely spread and deep discontent, that pervades all classes of the state under the rule of your Majesty! That there may not exist even a doubt of the discontent, will it be necessary that I insert in this letter the list of the many, who, for no other crime than that of wishing to think and act in unison with the establishments of the most illustrious nations, groan in dungeons, the description of which strikes horror to humanity; fill prisons, destined for the most infamous criminals; or without country, without fortune, without any of the sweets of life, in recompence for the most distinguished services, beg in foreign countries a scanty and precarious pittance, filled with bitterness and sorrow! It is not well known, that At the end of 1814, in consequence of observations in the London Journals, on the sorrowful condition of Spain, Don Pedro Labrador, to fascinate Europe, or rather your Majesty, published under his own name, in the Paris papers, an article, in which he asserts that Spain had never enjoyed so wise a government-that she had never experienced a period of greater prosperity-that the Spaniards had never been more contentedand that no nation of Europe enjoyed greater happiness. Such is the impudence of the chief counsellors of your Majesty. La pauvre Espagne me fait pitié, said a wise Frenchman, at the same time; an expression which should be more felt by every good Spaniard than the constant mockery in the four years of your Majesty's reign, there has been shed the blood of several heroes; who, no longer able to withstand a despotic and illegal power, had put themselves at the head of different parties in order to re-establish the dominion of law, of order, and of reason, that we all had sworn to defend; and without which, a king cannot be powerful, nor will he fail to become a tyrant!' Equally notorious, too, is the clandestine and shameful manner in which the sentence of the brave General Lacy was executed; his execution, perhaps, more than all besides, demonstrates to the fullest evidence the nation's discontent. Punishments decreed for crimes, on the sure principle that a wise legislation seeks rather to guard against offences than to repair the evils resulting from them, have for their chief object not so much the chastisement of the criminals themselves, as a salutary warning for other individuals of society. They are rather as an example for the future, than as a correction for the past; otherwise they would bear the character of revenge. So when executions are not done publicly, it clearly betokens the discontent of the people, as well as the injustice and fear of him who decrees them. To make my exposition with more clearness, I shall divide it into three parts. În the first, I shall run very rapidly over the circumstances and events connected with the departure and absence from, and the return of your Majesty to Spain. Without this previous examination, it would be impossible to appreciate the conduct of your Majesty, and the ground of the complaints of your subjects; to know what your Majesty had a right to claim from the nation, and what it had a right to expect from you. In the second part, I shall endeavour to make a sketch of the actual state of the nation. Without this it would not be possible to direct the blow at the errors of the measures of your Majesty's government; for, as a last result, all the good as well as the ills of a society, emanate only from the wisdom of its laws, and from the good or bad administration of them. In the third part, may I be per which is made through all Europe of your Majesty's government. Unfortunate is the prince whose ministers dare lull him with such lying sounds, to make him the plaything of their infamous revenge, or of their unmeasured ambition; unable to contend by other means with those whom they mark out for their victims. A tyrant is he who, having acquired the supreme authority according to law, in the exercise of his power counteracts or oversteps that which the law ordains. A despot is he who, without transgressing any law of the country, exercises the supreme authority without any other rule than that of his own inclination. An usurper is he who possesses himself of the supreme power, which by law appertains to another, although in the exercise of his authority he may in no way deviate from the dictates of the laws. mitted, Sire, to offer my opinion on the measures which ought to be adopted in order to restore the happiness of the nation; without which it is an impious and gross absurdity to wish to persuade your Majesty, that you can be a just and powerful Prince, loved by your subjects, and respected by foreign nations. PART I. UNHAPPILY kings are but men; that is to say, like them subject to errors and passions,--to the same inexperience, to the same moral and physical necessities. But with this difference, that the defects of kings are of much more consequence, for they have charge over the happiness of others, and they are, too, much less excusable, for they have greater means of shunning them. Whilst yet extremely young (or what is the same thing, without prudence, the fruit exclusively of years and of reflection, and with no other knowledge of the administration of public affairs than that derived from the theoretical tuition of a priest, qualified perchance to govern a seminary of ecclesiastics, but unfortunately little fitted to direct the conduct of a prince) your Majesty, in the life-time of your august father, saw yourself placed on the throne, in a situation extremely difficult to maintain it with dignity,-involved in the most serious internal dissensions, fatal to domestic tranquillity; at the same moment that a conqueror of great talent, daring, and with immense power, found himself master of the most important places on the frontier; and, under the mask of friendship, with troops inured to war, invaded the very capital, and overran the rest of the nation. Circumstances were unquestionably most untoward; and therefore any error of political calculation, was very pardonable in your Majesty at that juncture. Indeed the Spanish nation, too generous, too much given to bear and even to extenuate the faults of their kings, too susceptible of a certain kind of heroism, too much occupied with their foreign 1 This propensity, which perhaps originates in the character of the Arabs, manifests itself distinctly in almost all our plays; framed and adapted, as the great Lope de Vega says, to the taste and character of the people. Youth, beauty, high birth, and tragical events, with no other ornament than the virtue of bravery, were the only requisites which the Spaniards sought in their heroes of the stage and of romance. Hence it is that even in their heroes of real life, any other virtue or qualification appeared to them 1 foes, and highly disgusted with the disorders of the preceding reign, (since every people little enlightened confine their hatred to the tyrant without extending it to the tyranny) was occupied at that moment solely with the joy of having changed their king. By such a combination of circumstances the suffrages of all unanimously centered in your Majesty; carrying the prejudice to such a pitch, as to consider as a traitor to his country, him who did not most conscientiously esteem your Majesty to be the first hero of history, unsusceptible of blemish, and to whom every thing was owing. A few days after this, your Majesty, either following the bent of your own inclinations, or, without an opinion of your own, yielding to that of imbecile advisers; without consulting the nation, the assembling of which the despotism of three ages had considered as the greatest calamity; precipitated yourself into the snare which Napoleon had spread for you, and inconsiderately betook yourself to Bayonne. At this juncture did those very men, who have since striven for the defence of civil liberty, in order to defend the throne and the independence of their country, rouse up the nation, omitting no means of fomenting the prejudice in favor of your Majesty; without calculating that this was a very unsound basis for their future liberty; and without being able to foresee that this very weapon, the individual work of the "Liberales," was one day to be that which your Majesty should employ for the production of all their present sufferings. Notwithstanding, however, this strong prejudice, the general opinion of Spaniards could not fail to regard as a crime, or at least as the height of fatuity, the counsel of those who induced your Majesty to set out for Bayonne; leaving the nation the wretched alternative, either of a degrading submission, which it detested, and which it would at every risk avert; or of falling into real anarchy, to elect new authorities, and to eject those whom your Majesty had left; who, either corrupted, or intimidated by the very orders of your Majesty, thwarted every wish of the people that had been declared with so much heroism. As I am not writing a history, I cannot stop to record the events at Bayonne. It suffices for my object to know that there your Majesty was deprived of liberty, after having abdicated the throne in favor of your august father, he renouncing all his rights, and you Majesty, as hereditary Prince, all yours, in favor of Napoleon impertinent or superfluous. These circumstances, the greater part of which they found in your Majesty, (and which their imagination, more ardent than reflective, even exaggerated; beholding a young Prince, just delivered from a prison, scarce placed on a throne, and in that moment made a captive) have contributed to foment the prejudice, and to throw them off their guard against the insidious attacks of the enemies of liberty. |