1821. Aug. 6

Rid Yourselves

Lett 2. Interests concerned.

to be because they can not but be, left, as long as the necessity

continues, unsatisfied. But, to produce any such extreme pressure, what is requisite?

Nothing less than the state of things of which the following is the expression:

namely, such is the power, and at the same time the dispostion of these two

predominant classes of public Creditors if such they are to be called, that, if they

remain unsatisfied, they will, one or both of them, excite insurrection, and thus in

such sort as to restore the excruciating tyranny; or at least produce more mischief

than would have been produced by the continuance of injustice. Whatever would have

been done to them. Yet, even in this case, there remains something to be considered

on the other side: and that is, whether, by the corruption

and delusion which are among the inevitable resulting effects of so vast a mass of

wealth continuing in such hands and operating on the minds of the Representatives of

the people the disastrous consequences just mentioned, though not so near, are not

the less certain, not to say still more certain, than any of the mischiefs likely to

be produced by those same hands in the shape of that civil warfare: of that warfare

of which the country has already obtained but too much knowledge, from recent,

perhaps from not yet terminated, experience.

Unhappily between the two privileged, confederated and domineering

classes on the one part, and the one unprivileged, unconfederated, unprotected and

purely subject class on the other part, the competition is as between two mutually

concatenated chains of iron, and a rope of sand, the concatenated chains of bondage

in the gripe of which the body of the people is inclosed.

In Spain as elsewhere, the class of Public Creditors - a class not

possessing as such any the least particle of power - destitute accordingly of all

conjunct means of defending themselves,- all classes, who being possessed of power,

regard themselves as exposed to retrenchment feel of course a propensity to fall upon

this helpless class, and join hands in the plundering of it. It is accordingly at the

expense of this helpless class that, so long as possible, all retrenchment is made.

For the eventual refusal of whatever belongs, or is due by law either

to the Monarch or to the Clergy,- reasons, which, how far soever from being

conclusive, are not the less entitled to the appellation of reasons, are supplied by the nature of the case.

Spaniards, in yours as in every other Monarchy, whatsoever labour is

employed in defraying the personal expenditure of a Monarch,

is