Page images
PDF
EPUB

sionating the unfortunate monarch incautiously delivered up to, and borne away by, the ineptitude and perversity of a destructive, faction, the people resolved to re-establish a constitutional throne, and at the same time save their deluded king. Would to God this example may serve as a lesson to factious men, by causing them to see that their triumphs, however brilliant they may appear, are and always will be ephemeral; that Reason, as well as Nature, never loses its rights, and that when an enlightened nation knows and seeks its own good, there is no force sufficient to resist it on bio ni mot sveds of y

9

[ocr errors]

*

Loc Natufam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret." Hor.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Following the glorious example of generosity Spain has uniformly evinced, as a rule prescribed by the nation itself, we will not add rancor to wounds still open, by entering on the particulars of such awful crimes: in testimony, however; of the innocence of the persecuted, and as a proof also of the correct feeling and rectitude of mind which prevailed in the nation, suffice it to say, that out of three commissions, purposely named to condemn them and formed out of their enemies, nay, their very secret accusers,no one of them dared pronounce condemnation against them; and the last, not venturing to absolve them in order not to displease the government, persuaded the latter to inflict penalties upon them according to its own pleasure, and this was in fact done without any previous sentence, or indeed even a statement of the charges.

We shall proceed no further. We have penned what the Cortes did whilst surrounded by a desolating war, and the whole of Europe has seen and felt indignant at what has been done, in the midst of peace, by a faction that has governed Spain for the space of six years. As the object of this faction was not so much the unlimited power of the king as the permanency of the old abuses they expected to revive under its auspices, the proscription was not confined to the Constitution, but extended to all the decrees and resolutions of the Cortes by which those abuses had been destroyed. Thus was the door opened afresh to all those evils under which the monarchy had previously labored, and these were rendered more terrible by falling on a body already worn down by the efforts of the preceding struggle. Spain, beheld with disdain and even with pity by even the warmest friends of arbitrary power, scarcely could be considered the same nation that had lately done such great deeds. Without an army, 1 without a navy, on the eve of losing the whole of her ultra-marine possessions; deprived of revenue, credit, industry, and commerce; oppressed by restrictions, privileges, the Inquisition and the Jesuits; she was running headlong to her inevitable ruin. The general will of the nation, 3 and not bayonets or the efforts of a party, has stopt the government in its fatal and mad career. Six years of misery and the most alarming disorder had convinced the nation that despotism never moderated of itself, and compas

[ocr errors]

'An army, naked and deprived of pay, is only an army in name, and not worth having.

2 And is it possible there are people who still call this "restoration ?" 3 Either there never was any such in the world, or it never could be manifested in a more clear and decided manner. This latter testimony of the national will can be compared only with that evinced by the Spanish people at the time of their invasion by the French.

sionating the unfortunate monarch incautiously delivered up to, and borne away by, the ineptitude and perversity of a destructive, faction, the people resolved to re-establish a constitutional throne, and at the same time save their deluded king. Would to God this example may serve as a lesson to factious men, by causing them to see that their triumphs, however brilliant they may appear, are and always will be ephemeral; that Reason, as well as Nature, never loses its rights, and that when an enlightened nation knows and seeks its own good, there is no force sufficient resist it. tom bo ni rodt svbeds of 27th

to

1

qu asitiusq rift i 1911l odi bobater

bor Natufam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret." Hor. 10 19 21.25 sv boshi 1,9501971

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

1

1

TO'

MR. HEATHFIELD'S SECOND PUBLICATION,

ON THE

LIQUIDATION OF THE PUBLIC DEBT,

ENTITLED,

FURTHER OBSERVATIONS ON THE PROPRIETY AND EXPEDIENCY OF LIQUIDATING THE PUBLIC DEBT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM." [Printed in No. XXXII. of the Pamphleteer.]

LONDON:

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »