1820. Aug. 17

Emancipation Spanish

'. 11. Particular interests adverse

' 5. Interests adverse

Retrenchment necessary

As to the three pecuniary interests - the Public Creditor's, the Monarch's and the

Clergy's - to place thse claims at a vast and conspicuous height aboe that of the

Daemon, they have this in common - that retrenchment can not apply to them, without

giving birth to suffering:- to evil in positive shapres. To the demon it may apply

itself - and apply closely - if not withut porducing any such effect, at any rate

without porducing in that shape, any thing like equal effect.

See if this be not the case. Amminition, for example you

have none: @ well then, forbear to provide that quantity, which,

but for the cravings of the demon, you would not have thought of provideing: so

forbearing, yo produce not, in any human breast, any sense of suffering. In like

manner forbear in regard to stores of all sorts; forbear in

regard to men: men for the army,

men for the navy - men for every other branch of the

service, through which the demands of the demon would come.

So much as to the case where retrenchment may be made to a vast amount, yet no

suffering produced.

Now for an example of the case, where unless great caution is used, retrenchment can

not be made but proportioable suffering must be produced.

You have as yet your Council of the Indies. You will want no

council of the Indies when you have no Indies. But, like other men, the Members of

the existing council of the Indies will want subsistence. So will the present

professors of every permanent fund, which to supply the more imperious exigencies of

the state, you extinguish. For all this you will have your rules: rules by which the

great controversy between the present and the future will, somehow or other, be

decided. To touch upon the field calls for those rules, belongs not to the present

purposes. All that at present I need beg you to remember, is - that the demopn can

better bear fasting that any human creature can: the demon of ambition although he

has the demon of slaughter in his belly: and that which with my p[ublic means for the

war I am now waging against the [...?] of [...?], I have King, Clergy, and Public

Creditor and I hope the Soldiery on my side.

@. Cortes. sitting of July 18th 1820. Per Canga Arguelles War

Minister.