1822 April 4

Rid Yourselves

3 Ult r

letter 15. Relinquishment honorable

Straining still to reign - these rulers of yours - to reign in countries placed by

nature beyond their reach - straining with frog-like ambition coupled with frog-like

impotence, they would make you burst, and after all not reign over any thing unless

it were over you after they had ruined you: abdicating, they would nobly reign: reign

along with you - reign in the hearts of millions - reign in the page of history -

reign to the end of time.

Of this only true political glory let Portugal - let even Naples let even Piedmont -

as they have already been a source be in their turn a school to you. From all these

countries already have you reaped two harvests of this pure glory. In you they have

beheld and followed the first example of national self-defence: of national and

successful insurrection against regal despotism. preserving, with unexampled

magnanimity, preserving, and even fixing upon the throne the man by whom had they

failed, they would, as so many others had been that went before them, have been

destroyed. In this you outshine even the men of the Anglo-American United States. For

neither Crowns nor sceptors, nor thrones, nor coronets nor mitres, nor any other of

those insturments of State witchcraft, by which their European kinsmen continue still

blinded and enthralled had ever been in their view, as they have all along been in

your's.