king, although the name is there given, to allure the unwary and the nation." Somewhat farther on they make you say, Sire, "In every thing democracy is aimed at, divesting the army and navy, and all the establishments that long had borne this designation, of the title of royal, and substituting that of national, with which they flattered the people." What gross absurdities, improprieties, and follies, in so few lines! Poor Spain, if it be the authors of this production and their associates, through whom your Majesty promises to establish her happiness! If they deceived the unwary and the nation, because they wished for none but a monarchical government, leaving it but the empty name of king; how can this agree with flattering the people with all that was democratical; changing, with this sole view, two names from royal into national? If the people desired a monarchy, how could they at the same time wish for a democracy? If the Cortes aimed at this, how at the same time could it compass the other? If the will of the people should serve as a rule to the proceedings of the Cortes, why in such case is it looked at as a crime in this body to have aimed at flattering them with all that was democratical? If the will of the people ought not to have been a guide to them, why in such case impute as a crime that the Cortes had not abided by them to preserve all that was monarchical? I pass by the squeamishness of the charge, I do not notice the principles involved in it; I disregard the impropriety of expression; and setting aside all these defects, and those which I may not point out, is it possible that your ministers cannot bequeath to posterity in justification of their counsels and of your measures, any other warranty than a document full of such contradictions and weaknesses? Pitiable, Sire, is the prince whose ministers, in the full career of his extravagances, know not how to screen him from contempt and ridicule in the eyes of his own subjects!

They make you say, Sire, "In spite of the opposition of many deputies, perhaps of the greater number, by means of the clamor, threats, and violence of those who were present in the galleries at the meetings of the Cortes, the laws were passed." If it were only a minority of the deputies who were adverse to the new laws, to what purpose are we to suppose necessary this clamor, threats and violence? If the number of the deputies who were in opposition to the new laws, were the majority, had they so little virtue, so little honor, that having declared their opinion, they dared not maintain it? Why then the ill-timed modesty of your counsellors to express themselves doubtfully, as, perhaps of the greater number? But, on what solitary ground, can such an assertion gain credence, when there has not been a single victim in our whole revolution, and when there has been no punishment inflicted on one

individual of the many who have openly insulted the decrees of the Cortes? Impunity can constrain no one, neither the criminal in his excesses, nor the honest man in the fulfilment of his duties. The very representation of the sixty-nine deputies who betrayed the most sacred confidence that the country can repose in any of its individuals, does it not rather contradict, than prove this want of freedom in the deliberations of that legislative body? On the one side, all the public force, all the authority and influence of the government, and all the rewards; on the other, dungeons, tortures, punishments, and threats; if truth were on the side of the first, is it credible that this confession could only be obtained from sixty-nine individuals, who did not by far constitute the majority?

You are further made to say, Sire, "A mode of passing laws so foreign from the Spanish nation, gave room for alteration of the good laws, with which in other times she was respected and happy. Truly almost all the form of the ancient monarchical constitution was invaded; and following the revolutionary and democratical principles of the French constitution of 1791, laws were sanctioned, not of a limited monarchy, but of a popular government." Admitting all these data to be true, here the Cortes are not accused of having usurped the power of making laws, but of the abuse of making them too popular, and of changing the former ones. But if they could make them, by what reasoning, or on what acknowledged principles of legislation, do your counsellors infer that it was a crime to make them as popular as was possible, and to change all those that they thought ill digested? Who then could erect himself into a legislator of the legislators? But, Sire, I do not stop to notice the doctrine in which such accusations are founded, and only seek the facts on which they bear. What is that new mode of passing laws introduced into Spain by the Cortes of Cadiz ? Which those laws of our ancient constitution that your counsellors so vaguely assert to have been changed? What are those revolutionary and democratical principles adopted from the cited French constitution? Emphatic and bold assertions have been at all times the resources of arbitrary will, of imposture, and of blindness; while justice, truth, and prudence, constantly manifest themselves by proofs and clear testimony, without the necessity of assertions, or at most, of very few and very moderate ones. Although to change the laws is one part of the power of legislating; and although the laws which more than three hundred years ago made the nation respectable and happy, might be ill-suited to it in the present day, nevertheless the Cortes of Cadiz has done nothing more than re-establish some of those of our ancient constitution, which our in better days formed the palladium of our liberty, and of which a greater part had become obsolete by disuse, and others had been set aside by fraud and violence, during the reigns of Ferdinand the

Vth., Charles the Ist., and Philip the IId. If antiquity were alone to be respected, all those established by the Cortes, without excepting a single one, were more ancient in Spain, than those introduced during the three above-named reigns.

You are made, Sire, to say, "I will treat with the representatives of Spain and of the Indies, in Cortes lawfully assembled, and composed of both classes, as soon as the re-establishment of order and of the good customs in which the nation has lived, and which with its consent the kings my predecessors have established, shall enable them to be convoked." An extraordinary mode of announcing a royal promise of such importance! Who, though he rack his brains, can declare, I do not say the idea which is expressed, but even that which would be understood? What order and what good customs are those, the re-establishment of which is necessary to precede the Cortes promised by your Majesty? Is it those which the nation enjoyed in 1808, when your Majesty set out for Bayonne? It were absurd to suppose this, since by your own decree they are all re-established. Is it those introduced since that epoch? Such a supposition would be even more obnoxious, since by the same decree, war is made on them to their utter extirpation. Who are those representatives of the Indies with whom your Majesty offers to treat, when there never have been representatives of the Indies, unless those named in conformity to laws passed for that purpose during your absence, and all annulled by your decree? Here your advisers have made fallacy precede the promise itself. I mean to say, it is not sure that a promise had been made which was intended not to be fulfilled; there has been a feint of promising in order that it might not be demanded. The condition which is announced, the more it is examined, is altogether unintelligible, and consequently the promise is completely futile and ridiculous. On the other hand, supposing that clear and practicable, this would be superfluous. If the nation, as you say, with that order and those good customs, has been respected and happy, it is to be believed that on the re-establishment of these, it would again be so, and in such case to what purpose is it necessary to assemble the Cortes? But if that order and those good customs, as you maintain, are those which with consent of the nation the kings established, whilst that body does not assemble, how shall we see those good customs reinstated? Though it might not be forgotten, Sire, to oppress us; might it not at least be spared to insult us?

To give an air of goodness to your dispensations, Sire, you are made to say, in an emphatic and swelling manner, "It is known by all, not only what took place with the respectable bishop of Orense, but also the punishment which is held out for those who do not adhere and swear to the constitution." Of such deceit your counsellors alone could be capable. They alone who need not

pre-existing laws to inflict the severest punishments, could find it wrong that the new law regarding the mode and obligation of acknowledging the constitution, should mark the penalty which should be incurred by those who would not comply with the enactments thereof. They only to whom equality in the eye of the law is a chimera, and who measure not the integrity of actions by the conduct of men but by their professions, could consider as a crime that the laws framed by the Cortes of Cadiz exempted no one, how ever respectable he were, if this designation can be given to him who openly dares to violate the laws. Only they could find fault that it had been intended to carry into effect with the bishop of Orense, that which was enacted for the whole Spanish nation. If laws should be limited to attacking vices in the abstract, without imposing punishment on the criminals; legislators would have no other employment than to fight with shadows. How much less bad would it have been, Sire, that, now that your ministers altogether disregard justice, they had not omitted to discover its nullity, and that they had abstained from causing you to leave to history a document that presents better arms against your measures, than in any other mode the persecuted party could have availed themselves of.

You are made to say, Sire, "Up to this time reports so gross and infamous are impudently propagated in the public papers respecting my arrival and character, that even in regard to any other person they would be serious offences, deserving of severe reproof and chastisement." This assertion is of the same nature as all those contained in your decree. Notwithstanding the facility of adducing the proofs, if they existed, I am very sure that your coun sellors for this once will not be inconsistent in omitting to produce them. Unhappily the prejudice nurtured in your favor by the vanquished party for a noble purpose, at your return was converted by the victorious party to an end the most criminal. Without this the enemies of liberty know well they would not have achieved so easy a triumph. It is true that men who were lovers of their country, although they were ignorant of all that had passed at Valency, on the first rumor of your intended return, began to doubt of the object of your coming, but no one expressed himself in terms that could be in the least offensive to you. Your coming being suddenly effected, and in a manner the least honorable, no one being instrumental in it but the most mortal foe of the nation; the country being deprived of so much glory, when the moment was just arrived of wresting you from the clutches of this man, mistrust could not fail to be increased; but they did not on that account advance further neither in their precautions, nor in their writings. They dreaded Napoleon even when offering presents: this was all

that some of them ventured to say. After a sanguinary war of six years, supported chiefly by opinion, his name was too ominous to them, that they should blindly receive at his hand any voluntary gift, which did not appear to them suspicious; add to this that suspicion could not fail to be strengthened, on observing that you displayed no signs of gratitude for such heroic sacrifices as the nation had just made for your rescue. Even more than on this account on seeing that in full contempt of the decrees of the Cortes, you still remained in Valencia, given up to the counsels of those very men who had caused all the dissensions betwixt you and your august father; who had conducted you to Bayonne ; who had committed treason against the independence of their country, against the liberty of which they had been in constant opposition; and who, dreading the resentment of your august father, had endeavoured to annihilate your dynasty. Notwithstanding such just doubts, the partisans of liberty, over-delicate in whatever regarded the honor of your person, suppressed their sentiments, and not foreseeing sufficiently well the storm which threatened, by a fatality that Spain will long deplore, they remain too long silent; but perhaps they will feel that this charge in a great measure is unfounded. Without the necessity of gross and infamous reports, another and a widely different lot had befallen Spain, had they had sufficient foresight and knowledge of facts, to have shown distinctly to the people the real object of your abrupt return. What Spaniard then, unless of the party of your advisers, that is, of the party of Napoleon, would not have taken the alarm, on knowing that you in concert with him, through the intervention of the Count de la Foret, after the refusal by the Cortes to ratify the indecent treaty at Valency, had anew stipulated the destruction of our civil liberty and of our national independence? What Spaniard then would have shown himself insensible to the cries of the country on knowing the convention which you had just made with our greatest enemy, to annihilate the revolutionary ideas of the Cortes, according to the language of this man and of your counsellors, always in unison; but according to that of truth, the most moderate liberty, to which, setting aside our rights and your interests, our sacrifices and sentiments even of the most feeble gratitude had given us such ample claims? What Spaniard would have been so destitute of every sentiment of honor, as not to have felt himself deeply offended at hearing of the convention for detaching from the Peninsula allies with whom he had so cordially co-operated in the common object of our union, and who had so efficaciously supported us with their blood and treasure in the cause which maintained the defence of our independence and your rescue? What Spaniard would not have felt a stab to his national pride on hearing of the verbal convention which you had made to marry