[clxii. 15]

1820. July 28

Emancipation Spanish

Summary

True it is that the arrangement is but a temporary one, it was not intended for any thing more: a truth put out of doubt by the articles in which for future Cortess, 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, of 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 those provinces is proposed to be decided. Not as informants are these visitors - these casual visitors to be received: not as mere informants, but as Co-legislators.

But suppose the Spanish American Representatives all chosen by their constituents - all chosen in the best mode? How would the case be bettered? Alas! not much. In the one as in the other hemisphere, every object of ambition being disposed of, by some agreement or other that would be formed, between the influential members of the legislative Cortes and the influential members of the Executive Junta, corruptive influence would poison the whole, and the transantlantic Members would be the most numerous as well as surest victims of it. As vultures to a carcass place-hunters from Spanish America would be perpetually flocking to Madrid. At Madrid, Spanish-American Elections would be settled by the ruling powers: by a Committee, and that of course a secret one, composed in some proportion or other of the Members of the legislative and those of the Executive. As in England, so in Spain, every thing would be sham, nothing what it professed to be. The Spanish Constitution would be poisoned, and the Spanish American hands would be the hands to poison it.