date

[clxii. 248] 1821 Jan y 21
[clxii. 248]

1821 Jan y 21

Rid Yourselves

Dispositions /friendly and submissive dispositions/ these you will see are all the fruit that during the golden period under the supposition it is in the nature of the case that the Union should produce: of more substantial taxation, nothing: no acts: no dollars. The period concluded even these dispositions will have vanished. But to prove to you that under the Code it is not in the nature of the case that after the period any such disposition should remain may be referred to the next succeeding head.

Under the present head it may not be improper to beg your attention to the sources - to all the imaginable sources from which /source in all of them/ supposing contributions to come they would have to come. Nor does it appear to me that as the sources come successively under your view the observation /remarks/ should in any instance fail to present itself to you - No:- this will not do: nothing is to be expected from hence.

Guerilla defiance excepted, to speak of strength - a country's strength - is in other words to speak of the sinews of war - in a word of money. Should it then turn out that even during the golden age not a [...?] dollar perhaps not so much as a dollar subject to deductions has found its way into your treasury from Ultramaria - what from that source will have been the addition to your strength? Oh yes: if instead of strength the thing enquired of be weakness: weakness in abundance, if either vulnerability encrease of vulnerable points, or diminution of means of remedy by weakness.
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    This being admitted, during the golden period whatever expence is necessitated - expence of creation and outfit of navy - expence of exportation of armies - it is to the account of the Union with Ultramaria that it is to be carried.

    Now then, in the course of this same period - the two years commencing 6 months hence, what in the way of receipts from Ultramaria on account of Government can have of so much that would otherwise be to be levied on you by taxes, can your rulers be in any well grounded expectation of. Looking into your Constitutional Code, I can not find any thing: much less a sum sufficient to cover the vast expence for which your consideration has just been prayed.

    True it is /As to this matter/ that what the supposition we set out with imports is not merely willingness, but desire, ardent desire, and thence sure consent to the union in question considered first in a general point of view, and then in the point of view in which it is presented by your Constitutional Code. But betwixt a general consent and even submission to the union, with all its solemnity between this and actual contribution, over and above the contribution furnished for defraying the expence of the local government in the several countries, the interval is not inconsiderable: and no sooner is the eye directed upon the points that bear upon it /the subject/ in the Constitutional Code than it will be sure that under the Constitutional Code this interval never can be passed.

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    ' 2 Creoles Willing

    During this golden age for defence of these vast countries against their inhabitants by the supposition you are not in want of any thing: But I have given you no short term for it, /the term I have given you is not a short one,/ and I can not give you any longer. At the end of this term, the age of probability must commence. Before this term is at an end, beginning at the time when the happy intelligence has been compleated namely six months from the present day whatever it is your preparations for subsequent possession and retention must commence, and within the two years be compleated. Your supposition must then be - that the state of things such as that which at the time when I am now writing 7th January 1821 has place, may unless prevented by adequate preventives have place again, and must therefore at all points be provided against.

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