body? Power, Sire, and meanness, and unbridled passions may give whatever name they will to the most enormous atrocities; but reason and justice, which, not considering the lives and happiness of men as a mere plaything, decide on them only by the evidence of proven facts, and conformably with established laws, challenge and defy all your counsellors and judges to produce a single law of any code anterior to our revolution, which has been violated by the victims of so scandalous a persecution. Assuredly in the discovery of it they will not be more fortunate than in discovering that article of the constitution, which, according to themselves, instigated the multitude, ever credulous and ignorant, to assail religion. When I reflect on the disorders produced by so extensive a persecution, I shudder; but when I consider the nature of it, and that it has not been able to sustain itself, but at the expense of those very principles of public decency which are not sacrificed even in the most atrocious governments, I foresee that such a state of things is too violent to be durable, and that its consequences must be of the most fatal character.

I come now to speak of those called "Afrancesados." Although I am very far, Sire, from being attached to the party of those devoted to the French, whose political conduct the individuals of it have endeavoured to defend on the erroneous grounds that the nation was bound to yield obedience to the orders given by your Majesty, touching the cession of all your rights; considering all the measures of the Liberales as revolutionary and subversive of order; however I shall not on that account fail to express to your Majesty in favor of their cause all which in my opinion is demanded by humanity, by policy, and even by justice. I must candidly confess, that having taken arms against their country, or having, joined themselves with enemies who were in arms, this, unless we misinterpret all the obligations which bind men in society, cannot fail to make them be classed as such, especially during the struggle. However, admitting this, the country could hardly have done less than re-admit them to her bosom, considering the powerful motives which they could allege for deserving her indulgence and an oblivion of the past. Such in my consideration would have been the decision of the country, had the return of your Majesty been retarded some few months. In fact, how would the Cortes omit to take into consideration the wound which the country suffered by the loss of so large a multitude, when it so much wanted population? How could it also be disguised that a great part of the "Afrancesados" had embraced their party at a moment

Afrancesados, those who attached themselves to the French party.—T. VOL. XIV. NO. XXVIII.

Pam.

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when there was a dissolution of the bonds, if not of the commu→ nity of Spain, at least of its government; which dissolution, if not entirely, in a great measure exculpated their conduct? How could the Cortes forget, if this had happened, that the Spaniards, accustomed to follow blindly the orders of the king, the "Afrancesados" had been induced by those of your Majesty to submit themselves to the yoke of the Conqueror? How resist their intreaties, when the "Afrancesados" declared that they had thought sincerely that Spain could not resist so powerful an enemy as Napoleon; and that on this account they had conceived that to oppose him would be to augment her evils? Finally, how withhold indulgence from them when they said, We (agreeably with the opinion of politicians of the first class) had thought that the conquest of our country by the French was an advantage for her, since the conquest of a country inured to slavery and gross abuses is the most efficacious and secure means of acquiring liberty; and nothing to an unenlightened nation is more hurtful than to desire suddenly, and without previous training, to burst its bonds?

All this being alleged to a generous nation full of joy for its recent triumph, and to a Cortes which had given so many proofs of its disposition to forgiveness and mildness, the "Afrancesados" would have secured an entire pardon, and would have been restored to the bosom of their families; as had been proved in the instance of some of their companions, who during the contest even had returned to claim indulgence of their country, notwithstanding the difference both of times and of circumstances. But with your Majesty these men had nothing for which to claim forgiveness, since you could not consider it as a crime that they had obeyed your reiterated mandates to submit to the usurper. Moreover, Sire, how glaring the contradiction to inflict punishment on them for having conformed to these your orders, and on the Liberales for not having obeyed them? Did not your ministers and counsellors in Valencia, not excepting perhaps a single one, unless foreigners, belong to the same party? What testimony does this of itself offer, when they dare not, even in the way of pardon, receive back into the bosom of their country the partners of their sentiments and of their actions? Can your enemies themselves afford any more striking one of their unreasonableness and injustice? Was there one amongst them all who was not stained with equal crimes, and who besides had not to charge himself with having changed parties several times, as the sun shone with more or less warmth; and also with having influenced your Majesty to frame the indecent treaty of Valency, whereby you had

compromised yourself in guaranteeing to them all their rights, employments, and services by favor of Napoleon himself? To oblige yourself to condemn their conduct, was it not obliging yourself to condemn your own, agreeing in every point with their's, besides the circumstance that you, as chief of the nation, were more bound than any one to defend it, and the " Afrancesados" having done no more than follow your orders and your example, could not fail to be more excusable?

Before concluding this first part, it remains that I stop to say a few words on your decree of the fourth of May, 1814. This document, an eternal monument of the feelings of its authors, is the only one which your counsellors have been able to fabricate in order to justify before the eyes of the whole world, the precipitate measures of your Majesty, and the motives which have impelled you to destroy the constitution and the Cortes, and to persecute in an unexampled way, every one of their adherents. Till now this is the only authentic instrument conveying the charges against the party which I am defending. The examination of this, although cursory, will show, perhaps better than all which has been said, the injustice of the measures in which your ministers have engaged you. It would demand a separate work, to make point by point a counter-manifesto, as well from the importance of the changes and novelties to which it has given rise, as that it does not contain a single passage, in which we do not discover an absurdity, a falsity, a deception, or a most erroneous doctrine. However, I shall content myself at present with making some hasty observations on so singular a production; less however to confute its doctrine, already exposed by what I have said, than to show that it destroys. itself, not being susceptible of a more complete refutation than an attentive perusal of it affords.

"Since Divine Providence, by means of the spontaneous and solemn abdication of my august father, placed me on the throne of my ancestors, of which I already held myself to be the sworn successor, and recognised by its representatives assembled in Cortes after the privileges and customs of the Spanish nation." Such are the first words which words which begin this notable document put in the mouth of your Majesty. With what object, Sire, do your counsellors make you remind the nation of this renunciation, constantly denied by the mouth of your august father himself? If this be necessary for you to seat yourself lawfully on the throne, should it be you who examine its validity? How in such case do your counsellors mistake justice and delicacy so far as to constitute you the judge betwixt yourself and your august father, to condemn him

and to decide in your own favor? If disavowing by this decree the real title of king, conferred by the nation in the declaration of the Cortes, you would wish to reign by that of inheritance, and then your counsellors considered this spontaneous and solemn renunciation as necessary, your august father still living and persisting in the denial of it, could it be sufficient to establish a decision according to justice and decorum, to make you say that it had been spontaneous? Can a prince in this manner renounce filial respect, without wounding the public morals of the nation? Finally, if this renunciation were necessary to invest you with the sole title of hereditary king, and in no way essential to that which the nation had conferred on you; to what end then wish to give a value, as is done in this same decree, to the recognition made by the Cortes? But if the renunciation were not necessary, in order that you might reign with a just title; why recal the remembrance of it? Why in such a case openly contradict unnecessarily your august father? Why, too, the wicked, superfluous, and unaccustomed blasphemy of making Divine Providence interfere in an act so wretchedly justified? But on the other hand, passing by the spontaneity of an abdication made in the midst of a popular tumult, by a king and father at the same time, and protested against by himself as violent, notwithstanding it had been made in favor of the prince his heir; what was. there in it of solemnity? Betwixt being spontaneous and being solemn, there is, Sire, a wide difference, and accordingly it might be embellished by the former circumstance and yet want the latter. In Spain was known no other solemnity for acts of this kind than that of their being done before the Cortes of the nation, it being not sufficient that the hereditary prince, in whose favor the resignation was to be made, had been acknowledged as heir by the deputies of the nation; since this circumstance only enabled him to mount the throne on the death of the king his father, and not in any other case. Not being then preceded by this solemnity, so essential, and the only one which could be given to the renunciation of your august father, as is implied even in the words of your own decree; how could your counsellors have the impudence to make you utter a falsehood of such main importance, over which not the slightest veil could be thrown to screen it from the detection of any Spaniard of the least reflection? Your counsellors, Sire, can do nothing in the cause which they defend without betraying the impossibility of touching it, and not weakening it!

You are made to say, Sire, "My first attentions were directed to the restoration of certain magistrates and other persons, who had been arbritrarily divested of their offices, and to repair the

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evils which might have sprung from the pernicious influence of a favorite during the preceding reign." A little farther on, Sire, you are made to say, nor in Spain were her kings ever despots, nor have her good laws and constitution given a sanction to it." Your counsellors alone could commit the glaring absurdity of supposing that there had been kings who arbitrarily drove from their employments, magistrates and other persons, and that these same kings had never been despots. They alone could conceive the absurdity, that with good laws and a good constitution, kings could act arbitrarily, and under the baleful influence of a minion. They alone, at the expense of such absurdities, of decency, and of the respect owing to a father, could make you say that you had been occupied in repairing the evils of the reign of your august father, and not those of other reigns, doubtless of still greater consequence. They alone were capable of carrying their malignity so far as to make you say, that these evils had been the vices, not of the constitution and the laws, but of persons; the object of so false a proposition being attributable to no other design than that of rendering odious the person of your august fa ther.

They make you say, Sire, "But to this Cortes, there were not called the estates of the nobles and of the clergy." I pass by, Sire, that the nation, as I have already shown, might constitute itself as it held convenient; but even were it essential that these two estates should have been joined to the assembly, how was it possible at that moment to have carried this point into practice, since at least three-fourths of the first nobility and of the dignified clergy had committed treason against their country, having taken office in the service of the intruder king? How is this difficulty reconciled by the enemies of the Cortes, even should they not forget those trying periods of turbulent times of other Cortes, so inopportunely applied to the present case? Besides, if, as they make you declare, the high clergy and nobility had an indefeasible right to form in estates one part of the legislative body; why must it be made a crime in the Cortes of Cadiz to have deprived them of this privilege, substituting for it that they might be elected individually for the only chamber of which that body was composed? and it shall not be one in your Majesty to prevent them from exercising both in one, way and the other, so indefeasible a right, and also the whole nation, since where there is a national representation, the right is inviolable, and changeable only as to whether it be by classes or otherwise.

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You are made to say, Sire, "In the Cortes they sanctioned no laws of a limited monarchy, but those of a popular government with a chief or magistrate, the mere delegated executor, and no