[clxvii. 134]

1820. July 28.

Rid yourselves of Ultramaria

'.6. Representatives no security to Creoles

averse to submission before, will they be reconciled to it by being informed that they have done such and such things: those same things being the very things which they know they have not done? that they have chosen, and commissioned as their representatives, such and such men, whom in that character they never heard of? If not disposed to submission already, is there, in any such treatment, any thing that can tend to dispose them of it? Much more naturally, if before disposed to submission, would a man, by such means, be rendered averse. In England - oh yes, in England - all this would be unexceptionable: all this we have, and worse. Imposture is the very basis on which the Constitution, and every thing belonging to it, is built: in one branch fictitious election, in the two others factitious excellence. Give it but age, no imposture, no folly, no wickedness so gross to be worshipped and defended: defended, oh yes, to the very death. But note well this difference. Our impostures have age on their side: all of them. But this of yours?- It is but of yesterday. Adverse to such wider spreading interests and feelings, it will find all eyes open to the detection of it, all hearts prepared for the resisting of it.

Spaniards! In thus speaking of what has been done in this matter, think no that I have had any such meaning as that of passing condemnation upon it. In truth, nothing in it do I see to which, had it depended upon me, I might not myself, for aught I can say, have given my concurrence. With the book of the Constitution laying open as it stands, I see not how that which had been done could have been left undone. Even independently of the mandate of the existing law, so far as it concerns information - receipt of appropriate information - no better course would the nature of the case admitt of. But, to furnish information to the seat of power is one thing: to possess and exercise a share in that same power is a very different thing.

True it is that the arrangement here in question is but a temporary one: it was not intended for any thing more: that it was not is out of doubt by the articles. For On the occasion of all future Cortes, for Spanish America as for Spain, Members are to be elected by those whose representatives they are stiled: elected, and in the same mode. See articles 28 to 100. But this arrangement, temporary as it is in appearance, think what it is in effect. By this assembly, of which not a single member has been chosen by any one Province in Spanish America - by this assembly it is, that the fate of all these provinces is proposed to be decided. For the persons they elected in what capacity they to be received and all? Not merely as persons communicating wishes and furnishing information in support of those wishes. in a word not as mere Agents or informants, but as Co-Legislators.