APPENDIX B
The following letters from Mr. Campbell to Lord Holland, referring to the first meeting of the Cortes at Cadiz, have been considered of sufficient interest for publication.
Mr. R. Campbell to Lord Holland.
Cadiz, Sept. 26th, 1810.
My Lord,—I am just returned from the Isle of Leon where I had been to witness the opening of the Cortes, and am favoured with your Lordship’s letter of the 6th inst; the packet has orders to sail immediately upon receiving Mr. Wellesley’s despatches, which I am informed will be ready in less than an hour, so that I have only time to give your Lordship a very short and imperfect account of what has hitherto passed in the Cortes; such, however, as it is, I have no doubt but it will be interesting to your Lordship.
The Cortes met, agreeably to the summons of convocation, in the Isle of Leon, on the 24th inst, and having taken the usual oaths, administered to them in an adjoining church by the Bishop of Orense, President of the Regency, they repaired in a Body to the Theatre which had been fitted up for their reception, as the most convenient for them and the best adapted for the accommodation of the public of any place that could be selected in the Island. They were accompanied by a great concourse of people of all ranks, shouting, ‘Viva España, viva la nacion, y vivan los Padres de la Patria.’ After they were installed, the Regency who had accompanied them gave an account of their administration and made a formal demission of their authority in the hands of the Cortes, and then withdrew.
I was not present during the whole of the sitting, which continued till 5 o’clock in the morning, but the following is, I believe, a pretty correct account of the most important Decrees which were passed, some of which you will allow to be of great importance indeed, viz.:—
The sovereignty of the nation, now assembled in Cortes. The legislative power vested in them. The inviolability of the persons of the deputies. All the cessions made in Bayonne declared to be null and void, not only on account of the violence employed in obtaining them, but chiefly for having been made without the consent and contrary to the will of the Spanish nation so strongly pronounced. Ferdinand VII. declared to be King of Spain and the Indies. (The motion was, King and Sovereign, but the word Sovereign was rejected.)
The late Regency, for the present (interinamente) to exercise the executive power; they and the Ministers to be responsible to the Cortes for their conduct in the administration of public affairs and to grant no offices which were not absolutely and indispensably necessary in the actual circumstances of the nation.
The Regency to take the usual oaths to the Cortes (which they did on the same evening).
The Regency not to remove more than one league from the place where the Cortes shall be sitting.
All officers, civil, military, and judiciary, confirmed in their appointments. The judiciary to confine themselves strictly to their judicial capacities.
Everything was conducted with a greater degree of decorum than could have been expected, all circumstances considered. Your Lordship will be of opinion that it was a spectacle highly interesting to see a body of men thus suddenly assembled and unaccustomed to public business, discussing objects of the greatest magnitude with calmness and dignity and with as much confidence that they were laying the foundations of the independence, liberty, and happiness of their country as if there was not a Frenchman on this side of the Pyrenees, tho’ they were then deliberating with a French army in sight and almost within reach of their batteries.
I have the strongest hopes that the meeting of the Cortes will produce the most favourable effects. It cannot fail to rouse every dormant energy of the nation; here the enthusiasm is universal, and I am not afraid of its running into any of those horrible excesses which disgraced the French Revolution. The elections have fallen upon persons distinguished for talents, probity, and patriotism; this I know to be the case with respect to those deputies which have been chosen here, and I have reason to believe that it is generally so. There is but one Grandee in the Cortes—Villafranca—who was chosen by the Ayuntamiento of Murcia. Infantado would have been chosen by the Emigrants from Madrid here. He had the greatest number of suffrages; but being only one of three, who were balloted for agreeably to the mode of election prescribed by the enclosed paper, the lot fell upon a Relator of the Council of Castile, a very able and upright lawyer.
A commission, or rather committee, was appointed yesterday to draw up a plan of the forms by which their future proceedings were to be regulated. We expect that a decree will be passed in a few days establishing the liberty of the press; the plan of it, I have reason to think, is now preparing. We expect likewise that a journal of the proceedings and debates of the Cortes will be published daily, and this, I hope, will be circulated, in thousands, all over the country occupied by the enemy, by means of the guerrillas which are every day increasing in number, force, and audacity. I saw yesterday a respectable person who was in Madrid when the Empecinado attacked the Casa de campo, and when Joseph and his suite fled in confusion and dismay from the playhouse. Very few of the French cabinet couriers escape the vigilance and boldness of the guerrillas. Another intercepted mail has just arrived here containing correspondence of a very interesting nature; it will be soon published.
The Cortes will probably remove their sittings in a short time to Cadiz, where they will assemble in the church of St. Phelipe Neri, the place in Cadiz best adapted for the purpose. As it is not a parish church it will be ceded without difficulty by the confraternity to which it belongs. Your Lordship may remember that it is a handsome rotundo of modern architecture, with capacious galleries. Above the altar of the principal chapel there is a celebrated ‘Conception’ of Murillo; I mention this circumstance to assist your memory in recollecting the place.
I enclose a very well written address to the deputies of the Cortes which was published here three days before they met; the author, tho’ the initials of the name were not subjoined, your Lordship would readily know to be Quintana. He has not been elected for the Cortes. Capmany is one of the deputies for Catalonia.
The last decree of the Junta Central which you had the goodness to send me was not suppressed by their successors; it was circulated here in manuscript. I read it a few days after it was passed: it was not printed and published, but its not being so did not, in my opinion, arise from any improper motive. The truth is that the Junta Central were and still are held in such universal abhorrence that anything coming from them, were it ever so good in itself, would have been ill received by the public. The only member of that body to whom no public odium has attached is your friend Jovellanos. He has retired to some corner in Asturias; it was reported some weeks ago that he had been named deputy to the Cortes from some parts of that province, and the intelligence gave great and general satisfaction. Garay and a few others are still here, but seldom appear in public. Valdes is in Gibraltar. Tilly and Calvo close prisoners in the Castle of St. Sebastian. Villel in Catalonia, and the rest I know not where. Riquelme, who, to avoid the effects of the popular indignation, had taken refuge on board a Spanish frigate commanded by Dn. Raphael Lobo, was the only person killed by the fire of the French batteries on the Trocadero when the frigate, having been driven from her anchors during a violent storm, grounded within reach of the French batteries and was at last set on fire by red hot shot.
I enclose a number of the Conciso (a new paper published here) which has just come from the press; the account which it gives of the proceedings in the Cortes differs very little from what I have written above.
The assembly of the Cortes, tho’ late, is a most fortunate circumstance; it affords the only hope of saving the nation. The single circumstance of the Regency having been appointed by the Junta Central, would for ever have prevented them from obtaining the confidence of the public.
I beg to offer my best respects to Lady Holland and Mr. Allen, and have the honour to be, &c.
R. Campbell.
P.S.—Though the Cortes in a body are to have the tratamiento of Majesty, the individual members are to have no tratamiento nor any badge of distinction as members of Cortes. When the Regency took the oaths to the Cortes on the evening of the 24th, the Bishop of Orense did not come, saying he was fatigued and much indisposed, and he has since declined to take the oaths from some scruple of conscience, of what nature we do not know. The Cortes were sitting yesterday in a secret committee of the whole, deliberating upon a communication from the Regency.
Mr. R. Campbell to Lord Holland.
Cadiz, Dec. 10, 1810.
My Lord,—Being much hurried at present I must refer your Lordship to the public reports for an account of the further proceedings of the Cortes and of the events which have lately taken place in this country. I shall only say in general that we are still full of confidence. A measure, which I have taken the liberty of strongly recommending to some of my friends among the deputies, will probably be moved in the Cortes this day or to-morrow. It is to pass a decree making it a fundamental law of the state that any King of Spain or Prince of the blood royal who shall marry a foreigner without the consent of the Cortes, shall by that act forfeit his title to the crown. The subject of this decree, independent of its general policy, is immediately to anticipate any new trick or stratagem which Bonaparte may probably devise, should the campaign in Portugal prove, as we hope, signally disastrous to his arms, by marrying Ferdinand to a Frenchwoman or an Austrian, and bringing him to Spain as King, in order to create new factions and disunion. This law will probably be proposed by Arguelles, and I have little doubt will pass.
Your Lordship will perceive from this that we are at present more afraid of the artifices than of the arms of Napoleon.
Some discussion will likewise soon take place in the Cortes with respect to the assumption of the title of Majesty
by them; a measure which, I was aware, would be liable to much misconstruction in England. I shall write your Lordship more fully on this and some other subjects by next packet; in the mean time, your Lordship may be assured that there was no intention, by the assumption of this title, to degrade the royal authority.
I beg leave to offer my best respects to Lady Holland and Mr. Allen, and have the honour to be, &c.
R. Campbell.
Mr. R. Campbell to Lord Holland.
Cadiz, Dec. 20th, 1810.
My Lord,—The decree which I mentioned in my last letter with respect to the marriage of the Princes of the Spanish Blood Royal was actually proposed by Capmany, and discussed on the 10th. Capmany’s motion was that no King of Spain or Prince of the blood royal should contract matrimony with any person whatever, without the consent of the Cortes lawfully assembled; this is more general and, as a fundamental Law of the State, more consistent, perhaps, with sound policy, than the decree to which I alluded. The motion was referred to the committee on the constitution, and I hope they will lose no time in deciding upon it.
Such had been the shameful intriguing and trafficking for places and pensions, for titles and ribands and crosses and promotions in the army and navy, frequently conferred upon the most worthless individuals, during the government of the Central Junta and of the late Regency, that the self-denying decree appears to me to have been absolutely necessary to give the Cortes that degree of public confidence and popularity which alone could render their labours of any benefit to the nation.
With respect to the title of Majesty, I am convinced that, in assuming it, the Cortes had no intention to degrade the royal dignity and that no democratic views lurk under this measure. Your Lordship will be pleased to consider the very peculiar circumstances under which they met. The nation was then for the first time in the history of the Monarchy represented by deputies that had the least shadow of a claim to fair or legitimate election; they had to give to their country what it never possessed before—a Constitution, by which the hitherto despotic power of the King should be limited, and which should be binding on him as well as on the people. They had to prescribe to him the conditions upon which the Spanish nation were willing that he should continue to wear the crown. It was necessary that, at the first moment of their meeting, they should make some kind of public and solemn expression of the sovereign and inherent rights of the nation, lawfully represented, to form and establish the fundamental laws of the State. The title of Majesty was therefore not assumed with levity; its expediency was maturely considered. It was requisite that the multitude and all ranks and classes of the State should at once receive the deepest impression that the authority and dignity of the present extraordinary Cortes were paramount to every other; before which all other authorities and dignities must, for the present, bend. It was necessary, therefore, that they should be addressed in the language corresponding to the high dignity of their situation—they could not otherwise have taken or maintained possession of the lofty ground upon which they now stand, especially in a country where, more than in any other, respect and authority are connected in the minds of the vulgar with title and external appearance. Besides, the title of Majesty had just been given to the Central Junta and to the late Regency; and if the Cortes had not assumed the same title, it might have been considered as a public acknowledgment of inferiority in power and dignity to these two bodies. Had the Cortes taken the title of Highness and left that of Majesty with the Regency, how would it have sounded in the ears of a Spanish public that his Majesty was nominated by and responsible for his conduct to his Highness? I have not heard it even insinuated that any future Cortes (or by whatever other appellation the elective representatives of the people shall be distinguished) ought to be addressed by the title of Majesty. This title, it is generally understood, when the Constitution is established, should belong to the King alone, as the hereditary representative of the power and Majesty of the nation.
In addition to all this, your Lordship will have observed that the title of Majesty was more general in its application in Spain than it is in England. In England it belongs exclusively to the King; in Spain, it was likewise given to the Camera del Consejo Real and to the Consejo de Guerra. I ought to beg your Lordship’s pardon for hazarding these hasty opinions, which I submit with great sincerity to your more enlightened judgment.
A fungous growth of political pamphlets and periodical publications issue daily from the press. We have the Conciso, the Tertulia, the Buen Español, the political Telescope, and I believe the political Microscope and the political Spectacles; none of these have any merit except the Conciso, which gives the best diary we have yet had of the proceedings of the Cortes; but we have likewise the Semanario, revived by Quintana, which maintains its ancient reputation, and the Patriot in the Cortes, as yet chiefly distinguished for its boldness. Some numbers of these last I shall do myself the pleasure to send to your Lordship by the first good opportunity. I should have requested of Mr. Wellesley or Mr. Vaughan to take charge of any parcel or packet for you, but they reside at present in the Isla, whither I seldom go; and which is so crowded that I could not procure in it a house or accommodation of any kind. We are and have been in daily expectation that the Cortes will transfer their sittings to this city. The Cortes have committed and are daily committing a great many errors; but they are the errors of inexperience, and as they have upright intentions and are not indocile they will, I hope, soon correct such mistakes as they may inadvertently fall into, more especially when the forms are once established which are to regulate their future proceedings; and I am happy to say that this necessary regulation, the want of which has been already on many occasions severely felt, will soon take place.
I have seen exaggerated accounts in the English papers of the yellow fever which prevailed here; it was not virulent nor general, and has now, I believe, entirely vanished.
The French have at last succeeded in throwing a few nine-inch shells within our walls from their battery on the cabezuela of the Trocadero. One fell near the signal tower, almost in the centre of the city, and distant from the cabezuela about 2500 French toises, greater by 200 toises than any range of a shell formerly known. Not more than a dozen altogether fell within the walls; they fortunately did no damage and occasioned very little alarm. I am assured by Artillery officers that the charge of powder necessary to throw a shell to such a distance is so great, that after a few discharges the mortar will be rendered entirely useless. A few shells were first fired two or three days ago, a few more the next day, and they have since been silent. We are informed that one of their mortars burst.
A general enlistment is now carrying on here and rigorously executing, of all unmarried men without exception from the age of 16 to 45. Men we can find in abundance, but where we can get the means of clothing, arming, and subsisting them, unless we receive very liberal aid from England, it is difficult for me to conceive; two days ago, notwithstanding every measure of economy that has been adopted and is adopting, there was not a dollar in the treasury. The Government had applied a few weeks ago to the Junta of Cadiz for the loan of a million of dollars, to be repaid upon the arrival of the Bulwark from Vera Cruz; this the Junta had the scandalous indecency to refuse, except upon the condition that the regulation and collection of the customs of the port of Cadiz should be committed exclusively to their management, with other stipulations, the effect of which would have been to erect the Junta into a little petty sovereignty. This proposition was rejected with indignation, and the conduct of the Junta, upon this occasion, has justly rendered them extremely unpopular. Yesterday morning, the Government, being absolutely without a dollar, made application to the Consulado, and a meeting of the most respectable merchants being called most of whom never had any concern with the Junta, a great many very patriotic speeches were made, the million of dollars was immediately granted, without interest or condition of any kind and to be repaid whenever it was convenient for the Government. The Bulwark fortunately arrived in the evening, but has not brought so much money as was expected, only a million and a half dollars for the public treasury and about two millions private property.
I am sure I must have now tired your Lordship completely with this long and uninteresting letter, to which I shall here put a close, and have the honour to be most truly,
Your most obedt. Servt.
R. Campbell.