have allowed themselves to be seduced by (so important a position, will remain tranpeople who intend to destroy the friend- quil in the confidence with which the ship and amity which happily, and with- Government must inspire them, and in the out the least interruption, subsists between good faith of the British Cabinet.-The the two allied nations; and without same Council of Regency has more than which, neither union nor concord can once been the mark of calumnies, more or subsist between their respective Govern- less injurious, both in words and writings; ments. In regard to the imputations to but certain of its rectitude of conduct, and which your Excellency refers in your that nothing could be attached with the note, considering them as injurious to the least foundation, contrary to the decorum august Sovereign as to the Government of and dignity of its representation; thothe British nation, they cannot certainly roughly satisfied that it has its support in be attributed to the generality of the in- the opinion of the good, his Excellency habitants of Cadiz,-of this bulwark of has in consequence charged me to inform Spanish independence, much less to the your Excellency, that the Spanish nation, nation in general, which has given so as well as its Government, far from paymany proofs of its gratitude for the gene- ing attention to the insidious remarks with rous assistance of Great Britain. They which the enemy has continually endeacan, therefore, have their origin only in voured to dissolve the firm bonds which the imagination of some individuals, who, unite the two powers, are completely coninfluenced by the enemy, or carried away vinced that nothing but the combined ef by the desire of being singular in their forts of both can bring to a glorious conopinions and writings, aspire at an ephe clusion the arduous enterprise for which meral celebrity, to which they sacrifice they have fought; and they are therefore the most sacred interests of their country, penetrated with the just gratitude they which they do not know or prefer to their owe Great Britain, for the lively interest own. Fortunately, the number of persons with which, from the commencement of engaged in introducing mistrust between the war, it has protected and assisted the two allied nations is very limited, and Spain in defence of its King, and political so very inferior to those who properly independence. The expressions containappreciate the generous efforts of Great ed in this reply, and the sincere protesBritain in the present contest, that they tation, that the Council of Regency arcan never obtain the end which they have dently desires, as your Excellency must proposed: but rather, on the contrary, know, to every day draw closer the rela the artifice employed by the enemy to tions of friendship and reciprocal confisow discord being once known, as well as dence between both nations, will, without the instruments made use of, both will be doubt, suffice to calm the inquietude included in the execration of all good which momentarily was excited in the Spaniards, who, without dispute, consti- mind of your Excellency by the rumours tute the greater part of those who compose and writings which gave occasion to your this vast monarchy.-Nothing proves so Excellency's note; and at the same time, much what I have stated, as the injurious I flatter myself, will ensure the continuasuspicions which accompany the reports tion of the aids which the painful situation and rumours spread respecting the pre- of Spain renders so indispensable, in order tended occupation of Cadiz by the troops to happily conclude the heroic contest in of his Britannic Majesty, to which the which it is engaged, and whose success French have contributed from the first must necessarily be promoted through the day they presented themselves before this united efforts of the two united nations. I place for the purpose of introducing dis- reiterate to your Excellency my great cord, and producing mistrust in the minds esteem and consideration. God preserve of its inhabitants. The object of this im- your Excellency many years. posture being known, it will not be difficult to comprehend the views of those who are so eager in circulating and giving credit to them; but the public in reading the concluding expressions of your Excellency on this point, and well persuaded before, that the two Governments cannot do less than agree in respect to the number of troops necessary for the defence of

SPAIN.

EUSEBIO DE BARDAXI Y Azara.

-Decree of the Cortes, 19th of June 1811.

1. The Mediation offered by Great Britain, for the purpose of conciliating the Provinces of America, is accepted.

2. The indispensible basis must be, the

submission of the Provinces to acknowledge and swear allegiance to the Cortes and the Government, and to name Deputies who shall represent them in the said Cortes, and shall incorporate themselves with the other Representatives of the Nation.

3. That all hostilities shall be reciprocally suspended, and all persons, of either party, who are prisoners, shall be set free. 4. That the pretensions of the Provinces at variance with the Mother Country (disidentes) shall be heard, and attention paid to them as far as justice will permit.

5. At the expiration of eight months from the commencement of the negociation, or sooner if possible, a Report of the progress of it shall be made to the Spanish

Government.

scorn, and not less impolitic than irrational abuse, with which the speakers and journalists attached to the Grenville party or the Burdett faction, have at all times slandered the successive governments of Spain, and not seldom the Spaniards in general. The giant size of the dangers which assailed the insurgent nation on all sides we saw no less plainly than they, and measured far more distinctly, because we did not look at them through the confusion and exaggerating mist of panic and partypassions, and because we reflected on them, which these writers neither did or could do, from the habitual prostration of their spirits before that shapeless blaze with which unexampled success had invested unexampled iniquity. We were among the first too in preparing the public

6. Great Britain shall be permitted, dur-mind ing the negociation, to trade with the said provinces, it being left to the Cortes to consider whether they shall be admitted to a share of the trade with all the provinces of America.

7. The negociation must be concluded within fifteen months.

8. If, at the expiration of that time, it is not accomplished, Great Britain shall suspend all intercourse with the Provinces at variance with Spain, and shall assist the Mother Country in bringing them back to their duty.

9. The Government, in its answer to the English Minister, shall previously explain to him the motives which have induced it to accept the mediation, and to preserve its honour.

for the obstacles likely to arise from the prejudices and defects of the Spaniards, obstacles which ever appeared to us more truly formidable than the numbers, skill, and veteran courage of their invaders, and which at all times damped the confidence with which we should otherwise have predicted the ultimate success of the. invaded nation. We never presumed to affirm unconditionally the final triumph of the righteous cause; but we did, and still do venture to anticipate, that if it fail, it will not be solely or principally by the armies of Napoleón, but through folly, languor, and treachery on the part of Spain itself, through the unnatural aid afforded to her oppressors, by the indolence, mismanagement, bigotry, and cowardly selfishness of her great landed proprietors, whose own estates (an aweful truth, not confined to the Peninsula, yet strangely overlooked in the common presumptions of patriotism), whose own vast estates, we We are too well aware of the perplex- say, are bribes to them against their own ing difficulties, with which the leading country. The war with France presented Patriots of the Peninsula are environed, to to our minds evils far less fatal than the inculpate harshly or without reluctance civil war between the good and the bad even the present Regency of Spain. With among the Spaniards themselves, than the far greater pain do we feel ourselves called civil war between the heroic and defective on to arraign the measures, or to question qualities of the Spanish character itselfthe motives of the Spanish Cortes, from the between patience and fortitude, and connewness of the members to the science of tempt of death, strong nationality and uselegislation and the arts of government, ful antipathies on the one hand, and lanand the strangeness of the circumstances guor, want of foresight, and indiscreet apwhich require all the helps of the maturest plication to their allies; of feelings which and most manifold experience, united to should have been either suspended or rean intuition and foresight which no expe- served for their enemies, of jealous pride, rience can of itself supply. We have religious zeal, and that ill-timed overweensystematically, and from the very coming sense of their own self-sufficingness, in mencement of their arduous struggle, both reprobated and exposed the ungenerous

REMARKS, on the above Decree, published in the English hired print, the COURIER, of the 4th Sept. 1811.

which their national haughtiness acts the unconscious pandar for their national sloth.

But while we were alive and broad awake | ists, we had expected too much from the to these depressing truths, we could not, convocation of the Cortes in Spain: and however, look at these defects in a sepa- though we still believe, that this measure rate thought from the virtues with which has been of advantage, and still hope that they are in fact, alas! too indissolubly in- it will become more so, yet on the whole, terblended, or from the honourable feelings we confess that we have been disapwhich are the common source of both- pointed. As to the importance of a Re-twy-streaming fount, presentative Body during a revolutionary war, our opinions remain unchanged; but had we at any earlier period have been as well acquainted with the measures and results of the Cortes summoned in the war of the succession, we should have been less sanguine in our expectations of finding in the present Cortes all those essentials, which must combine to render a body of men assembled, a genuine Representative Body.-We may proceed to the measure, which has occasioned these prefatory remarks. The decree in question respects a point of the deepest interest to Great Britain, and of Spain herself, both directly and indirectly. It is obvious, that had there been nothing objectionable in the different articles of the Decree, yet the Decree itself would remain, in its domestic bearings, an encroachment of the Legislature on the Executive Power, and onesad specimen among too many others, both of ignorance as to the principles of a just Government, and of that all-meddling disposition incident to bodies of men sud

Where good and evil flow, honey and gall! Above all, for that can never be too often said, which never can be too often recollected, we could not forget, and we have never ceased to remind the public, that with all their faults and prejudices, and the miserable blunders or treachery of their leaders, the Spaniards have endured more, done more, and effected more against the common enemy of civilized humanity, than all the Courts, veteran Commanders, and disciplined armies of the whole Continent-more in four years than all the rest of continental Europe for almost twenty. And we have been accustomed to seal up the whole with the one home-truth, that if we are fighting the battles of Spain abroad, the Spaniards are fighting the battles of Great Britain in their own country, at the price of its devastation, and with their own ruined cottages, fields, and vineyards before their eyes. Our readers will, many of them, perhaps, think it unnecessary for us to I have thus anxiously prefaced the follow-denly invested with a power, for which ing animadversions on the general mea-neither their education had fitted, or their sures of the Cortes, and especially on its Decree of June the 19th; but we well knew the triumph, with which any apparent deviation on our part from our former hopes and predilections for the Spanish cause would be blazoned forth by the Party, which has signalized itself by its despair and abuse of the Spanish combatants, in the ordinary vehicle of its destruction; and that it would probably be attributed to influences which we disown, and to a change of opinion elsewhere which, were it as true as we believe it false, we have no means of knowing. We held it not unwise therefore to preclude the charge, as far as it is in our power: that is, to take away its plausibility, and disarm it for the candid and dispassionate. In many points bave our wishes been disappointed in one only our expectations. We confess, that misled by historical analogies, chiefly of America, and not duly appreciating, or rather at that time dwelling on the effects of English descent, English laws, customs, literature, religion, and connection on the character of the first American Revolution

former habits prepared them; while in its foreign relations, it was surely imprudent, needlessly and prematurely to obtrude on the public attention the only point, in which the interests of Spain, whenever she shall have been re-established in her integrity, and those of her zealous Ally, can be thought to stand in opposition to each other: the future interests of Spain, not the present, and in truth according to our convictions her supposed rather than her real interests. What measure more fatal to the hopes of the Peninsula could Napoleon have dictated to his emissaries and secret agents than ere the battle was half fought to stir up jealousies and heart-burnings among the allied combatants themselves concerning the fruits of their victory?-Such would have been the character of the Decree, from its very title and object; and the contents are every way answerable. The various accessary and aggravating reasons deducible from the temper, constitution, and past treatment of the Colonies, and the present circumstances of the Mother Country, we

shall reserve for an after discussion: at lucionary Colonies, first, because we expresent, we confine ourselves to such ob- pect from you a restoration of their exclujections, as lie on, or rather put out from, sive possession to ourselves, and which we tbe surface of the articles themselves. ourselves cannot achieve; and secondly, We scarcely need notice the hostile feel because it is out of our pouver to prevent ing and absurd pride, betrayed in the se- you, or to receive any advantages from lection of the absolute and offensive word, ihem but through you :--but whether.we submission, in the 2d article, or the same shall grant the privilege, where it as yet baughtiness combine with injustice in the remains in our power to prevent you, that tone and spirit of the fourth. Proposals must be matter for future consideration. so worded might Buonaparté make to an In orher words, our decision will depend insurrectionary town, which he had be on the result of a struggle between our leaguered, in the insolence of ostentatious hopes and fears, whether by this very preclemency; but such a body of Represen- vention we shall or shall not be likely to tatives should at no time make to their throw the yet onrevolted into a community constituents or fellow-subjects-how much of means and aims with the revolutionary less then the present imperfect, though colonies. However we in England may perhaps blamelessly imperfect, Cortes in appreciate the wisdom of the scruple, yet the present circumstances of Spain? But the Cortes, as Spaniards, ought assuredly if these articles are to be lamented, as neither to forget or under-rate the notorihaving a direct tendency, and almost ous fact, that we might have acquired the seeming to imply a design, to alienate exclusive trade of the Spanish Seitlements, their South American countrymen, far if we would have bribed them from the more must we regret the sixth and eighth, mother country, at that time our open as equally unjust and irritating both enemy, by an offer of independence. to the Colonies and to Great Britain. That our Commanders were prohibited When we recall the enthusiastic gene from making them this offer, lei this prorosity with which the latter, without mak hibition be politic or impolitic, could only ing a single condition, without extorting have proceeded from the sacred principle a single promise in her own behalf, poured of doing as we would that others should do and has continued to pour into Spain, her to us. But if the sixth article be, as we clothing, arms, treasures, and the very have shewn, at once impolicy and meanpride and pith of her military force, with ness of spirit, the eighth is characterised a confiding liberality which placed its last by the most glaring extravagance, and a step to the utterniost limit of prudence, folly of short-sighted selfishness almost and which halted not but in obedience to suicidal. From Great Britain hitherto we the paramount duty of self-preservation, have received our chief and amplest supwhen we re-peruse the strong and glowing ports. Stripped of our colonies, from Great language, in which the noblest Spanish Britain alone can we receive any assistor patriots, and the very Cortes itsell, con- And yet while we add year after veyed their gratitude and expressed their year to her burthens, we demand of ber admiration ; when we reflect, that the that she shall stop up the very channels conduct of the British Government was by which she may in part recruit her rethe organ and interpreter of an almost uni- sources, and while we want treasures which versal sentiment in the British nation, and we by our own strength are unable to prothat the Tyrant himself has officially at vide, we will prevent our ally from protributed the prolongation of the contest, curing them for us. The blood of her noand the delay of his success, to the circum- blest children is lavished in our behalf, stance, that Great Britain had, for the first and yet as far as in us lies we will deprive time, come forward as a principal in a mi- their mother of the very means, by which litary war; as we could never have ex- she is to furnish them with arms, of the pected, so can we not even now derive gold and silver, for which alone the Spanish from the noble character of uncorrupted farmers will supply them with food. And Spanish Patriots, a niggardly doling out then the modest request, that if we fail to of returns, not in the measures of grati- reconcile the colonists, as a common friend, tude, or even of a wise and liberal policy, we should hasten to cut their throats, as but in the spirit of a hard bargain, so volunteer enemies and substitute combamuch for necessity, and so much in ex- tants against our own interests this really pectation of a greater gain in repayment! is folly that might lead even a reluctant You may trade for 15 months to the revo- mind to a suspicion of more than folly.

ance.