REPRESENTATION of the MEMBERS of a PATRIOTIC CLUB in the City of VALLADOLID, and of other Citizens, to the KING of SPAIN. "Sire:-The undersigned citizens think that the time is arrived in which their sacred duty of looking not less to the safety of the state than to that of your majesty, authorizes them to speak a lauguage which, far from being deficient in respect, is the sincere expression of the most ardent patriotism, and the warmest affection to the person of your Majesty. Individual petitions against a particular abuse of power ought not in the present moment to be the object of the declaration of free citizens to your Majesty. Such declarations have rained like dew upon your palace, but they are either concealed from your view, or receive a sinister interpretation; therefore they produce no other results than such as are contrary to expectation. "The unforeseen fall of General Riego may be considered as the exciting cause; but it is not, in truth, the principal, nor the sole cause of this exposition: his lot, whatever it may be, can never be indifferent to Spaniards who love their country: it is, if we may use the expression, identified with the constitutional system, and the whole nation has fixed its eyes on his prosperous or adverse fortunes. Publicity, Sire, is the soul of representative governments; but although it were not so, neither justice nor policy would advise that the violent measures of government should be covered with the veil of mystery, which, although they affect one individual only at first, may in time compromise, as they really have compromised, the public tranquillity. Let his crimes therefore be declared, if in truth he has been so misled as to make an attempt against his country; and let the sword of the law fall upon his head, exhibiting before the face of neighbouring nations an act of justice which will at once do honour to the Spanish name, and to the sacred code of our liberties. But if, as it is to be hoped, and as it has happened, not for the first time, that he should turn out to be innocent, what inference are we to draw from his dismissal, which, although it is in the power of your Majesty to order, ought not to be effected by mere dislike or caprice? The only inference is, that it has been the work of the same hand from which proceeded the unjust attempts committed daily by those who held the reins of government-that it has coincided with the peculiar tendency and sinister end with which repeated appointments have been made and are making to the first offices, in the persons of men the most unfit for such situations and disaffected to the present order of things-that efforts are made to oppose the spirit of those liberal institutions by which we are governed, in order that under their shade, past evils may be perpetuated. On any other supposition, how can we explain the conduct of the council of state, which, since the persons employed in the administration of justice were suspended by the Cortes, with the intention that, passing through the ordeal of examination, only such should be nominated as are truly worthy of occupying posts so important, has replaced them all indiscriminately, and without consideration of what repeated decrees had provided? This is, Sire, if you will permit the expression, to give the National Congress a slap in the face, and to place yourself in discordance with its deliberations, in order to paralyze the majestic and tranquil progression which we have promised ourselves from a change of government without convulsion. Such may be said of that idea of a republican faction, which has been so often and so vainly declared, and the assertion of which doubtless has no other object than to impose upon the unwary, to intimidate the weak, and to kindle the fire of discord which burns and consumes us. All these, Sire, are direct plots against the constitution-plots and machinations conceived perhaps in the wretched clubs of a foreign policy, and seconded by those who have acquired an ascendancy over the meek and docile heart of your Majesty. Those persons have endeavoured to tear up the constitution from the Spanish soil, but it is firmly rooted in the hearts of more than two millions of Spaniards resolute and decided, and can only be rooted out from Spain along with them. Such measures, Sire, conduct us directly to a revolution which has not yet begun to a revolution horrible to name, the epitome of all the calamities of the human race. Horrible and bloody would it be, since the Liberales of 1821 are not like those of 1814; and what would be its consequences? We tremble when we contemplate them! Revolutions, like tempests, discharge their power preferably upon the most elevated points. What, then, would become of the sacred person of your Majesty? who could answer for it then? It is sacred and inviolable, Sire; but that inviolability is not like that of the Alps and Pyrennees. It can only be effective under the shade of law and order. In a revolution all things are overthrown. In the same revolution died the just Louis XVI., and the monster Robespierre. We must speak plainly, Sire, since, perhaps, this is the only time for doing it. The person of your Majesty is sacred and inviolable, but as long as that great charter which secures you that prerogative is established; as long as Spain contains one enemy of that charter, it behoves you to act as if your inviolability did not exist. By any other conduct your Majesty will at every step be surprised, and exposed to a precipice; and what is worse, perhaps, ignorance and malevolence will attribute to your Majesty the plots of foreigners. Far, Sire, from your petitioners be the idea that your Majesty can be the least involved in these plots; but, Sire, you are the image, and there will not be wanting ignorant men who will impute to you the faults of your priests, as thousands have imputed to our holy religion, the vices of which they themselves guilty. Preserve, therefore, your precious life. Preserve the vessel of the state which is on the point of foundering. Be a king for once. Place yourself at the head of that great nation, which, loving your Majesty with the greatest affection, deserves in re were turn the peace and the happiness for which it sighs. By not en joying those blessings at present, its members tremble and threaten a complete dissolution: by not having enjoyed them in the year 1814, you were made to appear a horrible monster of ingratitude: by not having enjoyed them for the last six years, you have been the object of attack among foreigners and of compassion among the sound part of your own sub jects; and, finally, by not now enjoying them, you appear under constraint while performing an act the greatest, the most spon taneous, and the most worthy of your magnanimous heart. Be a King, Sire, we repeat, and while the greatest and the best of men desire not to play the least part in the history of Kings. "Condescend, Sire, to accede to the wishes of your faithful subjects, who thus supplicate you, and who incessantly pray to the Almighty to preserve the life of your Majesty through a long course of years for the good of the monarchy. "Valladolid, Sept. 12, 1821." [Then follow the signatures of the individuals composing the patriotic club, and many of their fellow-citizens.] SPEECH of the KING of SPAIN at the Opening of the EXTRAORDINARY CORTES, on the 28th September, 1821. "Gentlemen ;-Since I expressed to the Cortes my motives for believing it advisable to call an extraordinary meeting of the Cortes, nothing has so much engaged my attention as the de sire to see them assembled. I now see them with the greatest satisfaction, and give myself wholly up to the pleasing and just hope of the good which the country will derive from their labours. The subjects which I have prepared to lay before these Cortes for their consideration are mostly such, the regulation of which is necessary for the more speedy consolidation of the constitutional system, such as the division of the territory, and the best means of placing, according to it, the political government of the Cortes, the mili→ tary ordinances, the plan of decree of the organization of the naval force, and the decree for the organization of the active militia. "I particularly urge you to place every thing in consonance with the fundamental law of the state, leaving the administration free from all those serious embarrassments which it often meets with for want of this necessary harmony, and which the govern ment cannot remove. I have also thought that some other points ought to be determined, which, though not so intimately connected with the constitution, have a great influence on the general prosperity; such as the measures to be adopted to restore the tranquillity, and to promote the welfare of the Americas, the examination and reform of the duties of customs, the means necessary to prevent the serious loss which the nation sustains by the currency of false or defective foreign coin, and the project of a decree in the charitable institutions. Though all the subjects that are going to be discussed by the Cortes are of so much importance, the fact itself of their being assembled to discuss them is still more so. This new proof and guarantee of the union which prevails between all the chief powers (of the state) must convince all the enemies of our institution that their efforts to subvert them will be vain. "I shall take advantage of the period in which the Cortes will continue assembled to give orders to propose any measure or project which may appear to my government necessary and urgent, as well as to ask their co-operation when circumstances may require. The field, gentlemen, is most extensive which is open to your zeal and your talents; and those qualities which so greatly distinguish you, combined with the prudence and circumspection which have marked all your deliberations, ensure to the country the completion of those advantages which it already owes to you. "I have the confidence that you will gain in both respects the admiration of the nation and of foreigners, entitling yourselves more and more to the particular esteem of your king, who will always consider the Cortes as the firmest support of his constitutional throne." SECOND PART of the REPORT of the SPECIAL COMMITTEE of the CORTES, appointed to take into Consideration the KING'S MESSAGE of the 25th November. The Committee appointed to examine the Message of his Majesty read in the sitting of November 26, after having, in the first part of the report, expressed their opinion respecting the disagreeable events of Cadiz, which caused the said message, now proceed, in consequence of what they had proposed, to point out, in this second part, the causes of the evils which they had announced in the first-evils which, unfortunately are already severely felt; and to propose those remedies, which, in their judgment, appear applicable, in order that by suppressing such evils in their birth, the constitutional prerogatives of the throne, as well as public liberty, may be preserved untouched; and our constitution, VOL. LXIII. the idol of all true Spaniards, and the only means of raising us to the prosperity to which we are entitled, may be consolidated in a stable manner. The Committee conceive, that though the existing disorders may proceed in a great measure from the conduct of the governed, they are also in some respect connected with that of the principal agents of the government-namely of his Majesty's ministers. And the Committee will enter, though with pain, into this disagreeable investigation, as the affairs of Cadiz and Seville require it, of public events which hold in expectation the true friends of the country, and the confidence which the King has conferred on the Cortes in his message. 2 P In examining this subject in its origin, it appears to the Committee that the circumstances under which the greater part of the present ministers entered on their important functions, were not the best calculated for obtaining for them public confidence. Subversive plans, of which the Cortes were publicly informed in the sitting of the 20th of Marchconspiracies of various descriptions against the constitutional system and parties of factious individuals, appearing, as it were, simultaneously on different points of the monarchy, must have rendered the first measures of the ministry very difficult. The patriots, who contemplated all these movements as menaces against the constitutional system, full of that agitation which is natural in similar circumstances, could not withdraw their penetrating inquiries from the conduct of the ministry, hoping that when they should have collected a sufficient number of facts, capable of explaining the character and extent of the conspiracy, they would easily discover its focus, and the hands which directed it. Public expectation was, however, then disappointed-the thread of the plot was lost; and this may have contributed, by increasing the disquietude to prevent the ministry from obtaining that public confidence which was so necessary in their first proceedings; and which was still further alienated after the separation of some of the provisional judges of Madrid, who took cognizance of the causes arising out of the conspiracy, notwithstanding that the public voice denounced them for having consulted the council of state for the preservation of their places. This circumstance, whicfr in other cases would have scarcely excited attention, is, at the same time, one of the motives which most powerfully influenced the melancholy state into which the due administration of justice has fallen; for the judges must naturally be discouraged when they find the career is not open to those who prosecute delinquents with the arm of the law, but to those who adulate power, and prostrate themselves before it. Public spirit, agitated with jealousies and fears, clearly manifested itself in the general complaints of all the provinces addressed to the extraordinary Cortes. The necessity in which the Cortes then was placed to interpose with their address to the king, to satisfy the wishes of the good and the wants of the country, must have given foundation to the suspicion that the ministers either did not know the whole extent of the evils which threatened us, or that the representations to the monarch did not possess that character of impartiality, nor the force which is indispensable in constitutional governments. After these events, the nation reposed tranquilly in the bosom of peace and hope; when the genius of discord, which had been repressed by the vigilance of Spaniards, recovered all its force in August last, agitated the passions, sowed distrust, and pointed to the dreadful picture of civil war. This is the terrible fruit of the schemes by which our enemies, domestic as well as foreign, were endeavouring to plunge us into the horrors of the most dreadful anarchy. Disappointed in their first |