Here, Sire, it naturally occurs, before we proceed farther, to enquire who in this state of things ought to be considered as king of the Spanish monarchy; and what was the line of conduct which the nation should have pursued? Most certainly, Sire, your counsellors, had they foreseen the importance of this point, would not have incited you to renounce that which the nation had granted, in order to claim that which in no sense could be justly maintained.

Even the very authors who have written most in favor of the absolute power of kings, imagine some cases in which they may forfeit the crown one amongst these is, when the king deserts the nation; passing, without its consent, into a foreign country. I do not, Sire, cite this so much with a view to confirm the assertion, which can and ought to be supported by much more solid reasons than those adduced by these writers, as to show your Majesty that they who would intimate to you the contrary, would weary themselves in vain with seeking authorities, or in producing arguments in their support. In every government, be it of what class it may, free or despotic, there is a condition, which admits not of the shortest suspension; since otherwise it would be absolutely impossible that government itself should subsist. Such is, on the part of the subjects, obedience to him who exercises supreme power; and on his part, protection to them, when they are attacked by an enemy domestic or foreign. Hence even the most obstinate defenders of the absolute power of kings find themselves obliged to confess, that the king who deserts his kingdom loses the crown; since otherwise the nation would exist in a state of complete anarchy, without a supreme head to execute the laws, or to give protection to the individual who would appeal to them. From this consideration too it is, that the laws of England wisely suppose that the king never dies, that he is a moral being that exists for ever, and that he exists physically and really; for although the person invested with the dignity may die, the same does not in this case happen as on the death of one installed in a subordinate function, whose place is not duly filled but by an especial appointment; but here another person is by the law substituted in the very act, without interruption or lapse of time; and without any necessity of election or of form. Here is, in fine, the true moral signification of the Spanish proverb, "To a king dead or displaced, a king placed."

Your Majesty, guided by the counsels of men whom I would rather consider as ignorant and weak, than as perfidious and traitors to their country, not only abandoned the nation at the very moment when it most needed protection, when a conqueror was invading it, but made a renunciation of all your rights in favor of

that conqueror himself. The warmest advocate of the despotic power of kings, Barclay, puts two cases in which a king dethrones himself. I shall repeat his words, literally translated from the Latin. In speaking of the second case, he says

"The other case is: when a king makes himself dependent on another, and subjects the kingdom (which his predecessors had left to him, and the people had entrusted free into his hands) to the dominion of another. For although it were not then his intention to prejudice the people, notwithstanding by this sole act he has lost the chief part of the kingly dignity, namely, that of beng immediately subordinate to the supreme power of God; and also because he has obliged his people, whose freedom he ought most zealously to defend, to submit themselves to the power and dominion of a foreign nation. By this act he has lost all the authority which he had in the kingdom, and does not assign any right to him on whom he would confer it; and by this single act he leaves his people absolutely freed from his power, and in a state to follow the dictates of their own desires."

For the counsellors of your Majesty, this reasoning is such, Sire, as they cannot controvert, without destroying at the same time the ill-founded edifice of their own political dogmas. But as I am not writing this representation with a view that it should be read only by your Majesty and by your counsellors; that I may destroy with the most solid arguments the very basis on which all their vain works stand, I will now avail myself of the doctrine of a Locke, one of the greatest men whom England has produced; and on the subject which we are now considering, the first oracle of the philosophic world.

"Delivering up a people (says Locke) to the subjection of a foreign power, whether it be done by the prince or by the legislative authority, is a dissolution of the government; for it being the object of every people, on entering into society, to form an individual and entire community, free and independent, governed by their own laws; nothing of all this can be accomplished from the moment that the first takes place.

"There is also another mode of dissolving the government, which is, when the prince neglects, abandons, or puts himself in a situation which disables him from exercising his functions; for in any of these cases the laws cannot provide for their own execution. In all these circumstances it is demonstrably clear, that the whole society is in complete anarchy; for when within itself there is no prince, who administers justice, who guides the force, who provides for the public wants, who sees that every member of the political body fills its proper station, discharging the duties which belong to it; then the society is but a multitude

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of men in confusion and disorder; then the laws cannot be executed and when this happens it is the same as if there were absolutely no laws; and a government without laws, is a mystery as inconceivable to the human mind, as it is incompatible with every society of men.

"Finally, governments are dissolved, when the legislative power, or the prince, act in a manner contrary to the confidence which had been reposed in them.

"In all these cases the people are left at liberty to provide for themselves, as they shall think conducive to their safety and better condition; changing now the persons, now the form itself of their government; for a society should never forfeit by the faults of others the natural and original right of self-preservation, which it can accomplish solely by establishing a good legislative body, and an executive power that shall faithfully execute the laws which this body shall enact."

I am very sure, Sire, that however much your counsellors may weary themselves in searching the books that have hitherto been written, they will find nothing that shall controvert this doctrine; hence it is clear that your Majesty by your absence and abdication forfeited all right to the crown; and the Spanish nation was left in absolute liberty to frame such a constitution as might be deemed appropriate. For the rest it would be superfluous to accumulate other proofs and authorities in support of my assertion.

In such a state of things, at the end of two years of war, without a king either in fact or by right, whatever may be said or thought to the contrary, the representatives of the nation, elected conformably to the determination of the supreme government, then existing, conformably certainly to the general opinion of the most sensible Spaniards, and without doubt in the way the most legal that such an election could take place under those circumstances, assembled in the Isle of Leon, one of the few points. free from French domination.

In their first Session, and before thinking of the many dangers which beset them, they unanimously declared your Majesty King of Spain and the Indies. By this recognition they bestowed upon you a crown that you had lost; and which, although received at their hands, was still more legitimate than the former one, much more becoming, more estimable, and more sanctioned by reason. In short, Sire, it was the only one which you might boast of wearing; for it was the only one exempt from all objection. After this act, that the gift might not be inefficient, their only great and constant care, at the same time that they framed the constitution of the nation, has been, at the cost of

the greatest sacrifices, to set free and unembarrassed that same throne, then so powerfully beset, and shortly before so shamefully abandoned. As none of their enemies have endeavoured to falsify this fact, it were superfluous to occupy myself in dilating on this second and important service, which they rendered to your Majesty.

But that the merit of these two services may distinctly appear, although I have not the honor of numbering myself amongst the individuals of so noble an assembly, permit me, Sire, to offer some observations; over which I must still cast a slight veil, lest their true coloring might too much offend.

The representatives of the nation, without exposing themselves to a censure for the infraction of any law, human or divine, were certainly at entire liberty, either to frame a Republic, or to name a king, taken from a new dynasty, who would at all events be more bound to conform to the future constitution, since he would have no other privileges to claim, than those which it might grant him. They were not ignorant, that after the abdication at Bayonne, your Majesty without compulsion had issued from Burdos the proclamation, in which you charge the Spaniards to submit to Napoleon. They knew that you had wrttien to him from Valencey, congratulating him on his victories, on the very investiture of Joseph, asking one of his nieces for your wife; and soliciting the command of a division of his army for the Infant Don Carlos. They were not ignorant that at this same time, your august father, although in the extreme of wretchedness, had never made to Napoleon a demonstration, which belied the noble character and greatness of an oppressed king; that in despite of his forlorn state, he had never failed to succour those Spaniards who had the honor of presenting themselves before him; nor did he cease publicly to manifest how much he felt the miseries of Spain. They all had seen the decree of the Escurial, and were aware of the circumstances therein published and circulated to the nation, by your august father himself. They knew that the abdication of Aranjuez had been made in the midst of a popular tumult, without consent of the nation, and without the least preparatory forms of decency, so necessary for the very safety of thrones, though we would altogether pass by what is due to the nation. Finally, they were acquainted that within two days from this extraordinary event, your august father had declared null the abdication made in favor of your Majesty; to overlook which were a contradiction; if they acted only on the principle of legitimacy, by virtue of which alone your counsellors are willing to consider you as King of Spain and of the Indies. If a nation have not the right to elect a king, even when one shall have abandoned it; as little can it cease to recognise him, who has once been ac

knowledged, so long as he shall not say to the nation itself that he will no longer reign; but still less can it when he says the very

contrary.

Notwithstanding all these considerations, every one of which was very sufficient to make them hesitate, not a single individual had a scruple in declaring your Majesty King of Spain and of the Indies. What more important desert in your eyes could these men have, or what more voluntary service could they have done you? And is it possible, Sire, on issuing in Valencia the decree of extermination against every one of them, commuted afterwards, in a language insulting to humanity, into the indulgent sentence of confiscation of goods and imprisonment in castles and fortresses; is it possible, I repeat, that services like these, so great, so purely spontaneous, that of themselves give the lie to all the fabrications of their enemies, should not have outweighed in the breast of your Majesty all their alleged crimes, even were they true; and even had you been taught to think, that you were privileged to trample on all laws that exist between man and man? Is it possible that you should have remunerated the party of those counsellors who persuaded you to abandon the nation and the throne, and who more or less were stained with oaths and fealties to the usurper; and that you should persecute the party of those true Spaniards who were the salvation of your Majesty and of the country? Is not this, Sire, to forget on the day of distribution of the booty, all those who were present on the day of battle? Would it so much wound the Majesty of justice, to pardon crimes, imputed and not even in appearance proved, from consideration of services the most important and indubitable? Would it so much stain the royal prerogative, even had these men fallen into some errors, that you should have felt the obligation, common to all Christians, of saying in singleheartedness to the King of kings, "forgive us, Lord, our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us?" To dispense pardon, where there is a plea for mercy, is the sweetest and noblest exercise of kingly prerogative that a monarch can claim.

I am aware that acknowledgment of a benefit is a tacit avowal of the superiority of the benefactor; and that princes, over-jealous of their own greatness, are ordinarily deficient, more than other men, in the virtue of gratitude, that binds closely men the most remote, and so much solaces human wretchedness. But, Sire, between the non-acknowledgment of a benefit, and the persecution of a benefactor with fire and blood, the distance is immeasurable; and if the history of princes offer, unhappily, repeated instances of the former, I know not that it presents a solitary example of the latter; even in the annals of the Emperors of the VOL. XIV Pam. NO. XXVIII. Y