[clxii. 70]

1820 May 13

Emancipation Spanish

' 6. Rulers arguments

Virtues no security

Rulers continually cry Utopia! they fundatum /radically/ Utopians.

' 6,7. Rulers arguments continued - By no virtues that have been or can have been displayed is any security afforded against the compleat abuse of such power. These virtues good reason for trusting them with the maintenance of power over Spain: none for do. over Colonies.

In regard to these same virtues - all such of them as have manifested themselves - by no man can they be regarded with a sincerer pleasure than that with which they have been and continue to be regarded by me.

But by no virtues that have been manifested by them or any of them - even had the same virtues been manifested in the highest degree by all of them - is it rendered in any degree the more probable, that for the sake of the profit obtainable as above to themselves - whether individually or collectively taken they would not be at all times ready to subject the whole Spanish nation collectively, to loss to any amount, in the shapes above indicated, or any others, their own share in it being included as it could not but be.

Let us see what the virtues are that have been manifested, and what the persons by whom they have manifested and what the virtues that have respectively been manifested.

The persons of the ruling class by whom virtues have been manifested are 1. in the first place the army officers. 2. in the next place, members of the non-military part of the government, administration[?] department and legislature taken together.

1. As to the Army officers, the virtue most conspicuous and most transcendent is courage. In the ordinary state /case/ of military service, it is only from one source that military men expose themselves to danger of death and wounds and death namely that of ordinary military warfare: in the case in question in addition to danger from that source a danger which would only be occasional and temporary, they exposed themselves to death and /with/ pecuniary loss to their relatuives at the hands of a despotic government which on failure of the insurrection would have continued in encreased wrath as well as encreased power.