"New governors and judges initiated in the new system projected by Spain against America, decided in the support of it at our expense, and provided with instructions for even the last political change which might occur in the other hemisphere, were the consequences resulting from the surprize that our unparalleled and unexpected generosity caused to the central junta. Ambiguity, artifice, and disorder were the springs employed to keep in motion this short-lived administration: as they saw their empire exposed and tottering, they wished to gain in one day what had enriched their ancestors for many years; and as their authority was backed by that of their parasites, all their endeavours were directed to the support of each other under the shadow of our illusion and good faith. No statute or law against these plans was effective; and every measure that favoured the new system of political freemasonry was to have the force of law, however opposed it might be to the principle of equity and justice. After the declaration of the Captain-general Emparan made to the audiencia, that in Caracas there was no other law nor will but his own, and this fully demonstrated in several arbitrary acts and excesses, such as placing on the bench of the judge the King's accuser-general; intercepting and opening the papers sent by Don Pedro Gonsales Ortega to the central junta; expulsing from the provinces this same public functionary, as well as the captain, Don Francisco Rodrigues, and the assessor of the consulate, Don Miguel Jose Sanz, who were all embarked for Cadiz or Porto Rico, as well as sentencing to labour in the public works without any previous form of trial a considerable number of men, who were dragged from their homes under the epithet of vagrants; revoking and suspending the resolutions of the royal audience, when they were according to his caprice and absolute will, after naming a recorder without the consent of the corporation; creating and causing the assessor to be received without either title or authority for the same, after he had supported his pride and his ignorance in every excess; after many scandalous disputes between the audience and the corporation, and after all the law characters had been reconciled to the plan of these despots, in order that these might be more inexpugnable to us, it was agreed to organize and carry into effect the project of espionage and duplicity.
"Of all this there remains authentic testimony in our archives, notwithstanding the vigilance with which these were examined by the friends of the late authorities: there exists in Cuenca an order of the Spanish government to excite discord among the nobles and among the different branches of American families. There are besides many written and well-known documents of corruption, gambling, and libertinism promoted by Guevara, for the purpose of demoralizing the country; and no one can ever forget the collusions and subornings publicly used by the judges, and proved in the act of their residencia.
"Under these auspices the defeats and misfortunes of the Spanish armies were concealed. Pompous and imaginary triumphs over the French on the peninsula were forged and announced; the streets were ordered to be illuminated, gunpowder was wasted in salutes, the bells announced the rejoicings, and religion was prostituted by the chanting Te Deums and other public acts, as if to insult Providence, and invoke a perpetuity of the evils we groaned under. In order to allow us no time to analyze our own fate, or discover the snares laid for us, conspiracies were invented, parties and factions were forged in the imagination of our oppressors, every one was calumniated who did not consent to be initiated in the mysteries of perfidy; fleets and emissaries from France were figured as being on our seas, and residing among us; our correspondence with the neighbouring colonies was circumscribed and restricted; our trade received new fetters, and the whole was for the purpose of keeping us in a state of continual agitation, that we might not fix our attention on our own situation and interests.
"When our forbearance was once alarmed, and our vigilance awakened, we began to lose all confidence in the governments of Spain and their agents; through the veil of their intrigues and machinations we perceived the horrid futurity that awaited us; the genius of truth, elevated above the dense atmosphere of oppression and calumny, pointed out to us with the finger of impartiality the true fate of Spain, the disorders of her governments, the unavailing energy of her inhabitants, the formidable power of her enemies, and the groundless hopes of her salvation. Shut up in our own houses, surrounded by spies, threatened with infamy and banishment, scarcely daring to bewail our own situation, or even secretly to complain against our vigilant and cunning enemies; the consonance of our blinded sighs exhaled in the moments of the most galling oppression, at length gave uniformity to our sentiments and united our opinions. Shut up within the walls of our own houses, and debarred from all communication with our fellow-citizens, there was scarcely an individual in Caracas who did not think that the moment of being for ever free, or of sanctioning irrevocably a new and horrid slavery, had arrived.
"Every day discovered more and more the nullity of the acts of Bayonne, the invalidity of the rights of Ferdinand, and of all the Bourbons who were privy to the arrangements; the ignominy with which they delivered up as slaves those who had placed them on the throne in opposition to the house of Austria; the connivance of the head functionaries in Spain to the plans of the new dynasty; the fate that these same plans prepared for America, and the necessity of forming some resolution that might shield the new world from the calamities which from its relations with the old were about to visit it. All saw their treasures buried in the unfathomable disorders of the peninsula; they wept for the blood of Americans spilt in defence of the enemies of America, in order to support the slavery of their own country. Notwithstanding the vigilance of the tyrants, all saw the very interior of Spain, where they beheld nothing but disorder, corruption, factions, misfortunes, defeats, treacheries, dispersed armies, whole provinces in the hands of the enemy and their disciplined troops, and at the head of all a weak and tumultuary government formed out of such rare elements.
"Dismay was the general and uniform impression observed in the countenances of the people of Venezuela by the agents of oppression sent from Spain to support at any hazard the infamous cause of their constituents; a word might cause proscription, or a discourse banishment to the author; and every attempt to do in America what was done in Spain, if it did not shed the blood of the Americans, it was at least sufficient to occasion the ruin, infamy, and desolation of many families, as may be seen by the act of proscription of several officers and citizens of rank and probity, decreed on the twentieth of March, 1810, by Emparan.[1] Such a miscalculation could not fail to produce or multiply the convulsions, to augment the popular reaction, to prepare the combustible, and dispose it in such a manner that the least spark would kindle it, and create a blaze that would consume, and even efface every vestige of so hard and melancholy a condition. Spain needy and almost desolate, her fate dependent on the generosity of America, and almost in the act of being blotted out from the list of nations, appeared as if transported back to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, she again began to conquer America with arms more destructive than iron or lead; every day gave birth to some new proof of the fate that awaited us, a fate that would place us in the sad alternative of being sold to a foreign power, or obliged to groan for ever under a fresh and irrevocable bondage, whilst we alone were expectant on the happy moment that might bring our opinions into action, and join us in such a manner that we could express them, and support them.
"Amidst the sighs and imprecations of general despair, the entrance of the French in Andalusia, the dissolution of the central junta brought about by the effects of public execration, and the abortive institution of another protean government, under the name of regency, reached our ears. This was announced under ideas more liberal, and on perceiving the efforts of the Americans to avail themselves of the opportunity which the vices and nullities of so strange a government presented to them, they endeavoured to strengthen the illusion by brilliant promises, by theories barren of reform, and by announcing to us that our fate was no longer in the hands of viceroys, ministers, or governors; at the same time that all their agents received the strictest orders to watch over our conduct, and even over our opinions, and not to suffer these to exceed the limits traced by the eloquence that gilded the chains forged in the captious and cunning promise of emancipation.
"At any other period this would have sufficed to deceive the Americans, but the junta of Seville, as well as the central junta, had already gone too far in order to remove the bandage from our eyes, and what was then combined, meditated, and polished to subject us again with phrases and hyperboles, only served to redouble our vigilance, to collect our opinions, and to establish a firm and unshaken resolution to perish rather than remain any longer the victims of cabal and perfidy. The eve of that day on which our religion celebrates the most august mystery of the redemption of the human race, was that designated by Providence to be the commencement of the political redemption of America. On Holy Thursday, April nineteenth, 1810, the colossus of despotism was thrown down in Venezuela, the empire of law proclaimed, and the tyrants expelled with all the suavity, moderation, and tranquillity that they themselves have confessed, so much so in fact, as to have filled with admiration of, and friendship for us the rest of the impartial world.
"All sensible persons would have supposed that a nation recovering its rights, and freeing itself from its oppressors, would in its blind fury have broken down every barrier that might place it directly or indirectly within the reach of the influence of those very governments that had hitherto caused its misfortunes, and its oppression. Venezuela, faithful to her promises, did no more than ensure her own security in order to comply with them, and if with one strong and generous hand she deposed the authors of her misery and her slavery, with the other she placed the name of Ferdinand VII. at the head of her new government, swore to maintain his rights, promised to acknowledge the unity and integrity of the Spanish nation, opened her arms to her European brethren, offered them an asylum in their misfortunes and calamities, equally hated the enemies of the Spanish name, solicited the generous alliance of England, and prepared to take her share of the success or misfortunes of the nation from whom she could and ought to be separated.
"But it was not this that the regency exacted of us, when it declared us free in its theories, it subjected us in practice to a small and insignificant representation, believing that those to whom it considered nothing was due, would be content to receive whatever was granted to them by their masters. Under so liberal a calculation the regency was desirous of keeping up the illusion, to pay us with words, promises, and inscriptions for our long slavery, and for the blood and treasure we had expended in Spain. We were fully aware how little we had to expect from the policy and intrusive agents of Ferdinand, we were not ignorant that if we were not to be dependent on viceroys, ministers, and governors, with greater reason we could not be subject to a king, a captive and without the rights of authority; nor to a government null and illegitimate, nor to a nation incapable of holding sway over another, nor to a peninsular corner of Europe, almost wholly occupied by a foreign force. Nevertheless, desirous of effecting our own freedom by the means of generosity, moderation, and civic virtues, we acknowledged the imaginary rights of the son of Maria Louisa, we respected the misfortunes of the nation, and officially announced to the regency that we disowned, that we promised not to separate from Spain so long as she maintained a legal government, established according to the will of the nation, and in which America had that part given to her, required by justice, necessity, and the political importance of her territory.