"It is well known, that the promissory oath in question is no more than an accessory bond, which always pre-supposes the validity and legitimacy of the contract ratified by the same. When in the contract there is no defect that may render it null and illegitimate, it is then that we invoke God by an oath, believing that he will not refuse to witness it, and guarantee the fulfilment of our promises, because the obligation to comply with them is founded on an evident maxim of the natural law instituted by the divine author. God can at no time guarantee any contract that is not binding in the natural order of things, nor can it be supposed that he will accept any contract opposed to those very laws which he himself has established for the felicity of the human race. It would be insulting his wisdom to believe that he would listen to our vows when we implore his divine concurrence to a contract that is opposed to our own liberty, the only origin of the right of our actions—such a supposition would inculcate an idea that God had an interest in multiplying our duties by means of such agreements, to the prejudice of our national liberty. Even in case the oath could add any new obligation to that of the contract thereby confirmed, the nullity of the one would consequently be inseparable from the nullity of the other; and if he who violates a sworn contract be criminal, and worthy of punishment, it is because he has violated good faith, the only bond of society, without the perjury being more concerned than to increase the crime, and to aggravate the punishment. That national law which binds us to fulfil our promises, and that divine one which forbids us to invoke the name of God in vain, do not in any manner alter the obligation contracted under the simultaneous and inseparable effects of both laws, so that the infraction of the one supposes the infraction of the other. For our good we call on God to witness our promises, and when we believe that he can guarantee them, and avenge their violation, it is only because the contract has nothing in itself that can render it invalid, illicit, unworthy of or contrary to the eternal justice of the Supreme Arbiter to whom we submit it. It is according to these principles that we are to analyze the conditional oath by which the congress of Venezuela has promised to preserve the rights legally held by Ferdinand VII., without attributing to it any other which, being contrary to the liberty of the people, would consequently invalidate the contract, and annul the oath.

"We have seen that the people of Venezuela, impelled by the government of Spain, became insensible of the circumstances that rendered the tolerated rights of Ferdinand void, in consequence of the transactions of the Escurial and Aranjues, as well as those of all his house, by the cessions and abdications made at Bayonne; and from the demonstration of this truth, follows, as a corollary, the invalidity of an oath, which, besides being conditional, could not subsist beyond the contract to which it was added as an accessory bond. To preserve the right of Ferdinand was all that Caracas promised on the nineteenth of April, at a time when she was ignorant that he had lost them—Judicio caret juramentum, incantum Div. tom. 22, p. 80, art. 3. Si vero sit quidem posibile fieri; sed fieri non debeat, vel quid est per se malum, vel quia est boni impeditivum, tunc juramento deest justitia, et ideo non est servandum. Quest, cit. art. 7. Even if Ferdinand retained them with regard to Spain, it remains to be proved, whether by virtue of the same he was authorized to cede America to another dynasty, without the concurrence of her own consent. The accounts which Venezuela, in spite of the oppression and cunning of the intrusive government, was enabled to obtain of the conduct of the Bourbons, and the fatal effects that it was likely to entail on America, have constituted a body of irrefragable proofs, evincing that as Ferdinand no longer retained any rights, the preservation of which Venezuela promised, as well as the oath by which she confirmed this promise, consequently are, and ought to be cancelled—Jurabis in veritate, et in judicio, et in justicia. From the first part of the position, the nullity of the second becomes a legitimate consequence.

"But neither the Escurial, Aranjues, nor Bayonne were the first theatres of the transactions which deprived the Bourbons of their rights to America. By the treaty of Basil, made July fifteenth, 1795, (by which Godoy obtained the title of Prince of the Peace), and in the court of Spain the fundamental laws of the Spanish dominion were broken. Charles IV., contrary to one of them (Recopil. de Indias, law 1. tit. 1.) ceded the island of Santa Domingo to France, and disposed of Louisiana to the same foreign power, which unequalled and scandalous infractions authorised the Americans, against whom they were committed, as well as the whole of the Colombian people, to separate from the obedience, and lay aside the oath by which they had bound themselves to the crown of Castile, in like manner as they were entitled to protest against the imminent danger which threatened the integrity of the monarchy in both worlds, by the introduction of French troops into Spain previous to the transactions at Bayonne, invited no doubt by one of the Bourbon factions, in order to usurp the national sovereignty in favour of an intruder, a foreigner, or a traitor; but as these events are prior to the period that we have fixed on for our discussion, we will return to those which have authorised our conduct since the year 1808.

"Every one is aware of the occurrences that took place at the Escurial in 1807, but perhaps all are not acquainted with the natural results of those events. It is not our intention to enter here into the discovery of the origin of the discord that existed in the family of Charles IV.; let England and France attribute it to themselves, both governments have their accusers and their defenders; neither is it to our purpose to notice the marriage agreed on between Ferdinand and the daughter-in-law of Napoleon, the peace of Tilsit, the conference at Erfuhrt, the secret treaty at St. Cloud, and the emigration of the house of Bragansa to the Brasils. What most materially concerns us is, that by the transactions of the Escurial, Ferdinand VII. was declared a traitor to his father Charles IV. A hundred pens and a hundred presses published at the same time in both worlds his perfidy, and the pardon which at his prayer was granted to him by his father; but this pardon, as an attribute of the sovereignty and of paternal authority, only absolved the son from corporal punishment; the king his father had no power to free him from the infamy and inability which the constitutional laws of Spain impose on the traitor, not only to prevent him from obtaining the royal dignity, but even the lowest office of civil employment; Ferdinand therefore never could be a lawful king of Spain, or of the Indies.

"To this condition the heir of the crown remained reduced till the month of March, 1808, when while the court was at Aranjues, the project that was frustrated at the Escurial was converted into insurrection, and open mutiny, by the friends of Ferdinand. The public exasperation against the ministry of Godoy served as a pretext to the faction of Ferdinand, and as an indirect plea to convert to the good of the nation what was perhaps allotted to other designs. The fact of using force against his father, instead of supplication and convincing arguments; his having excited the people to mutiny; his having assembled the mob in front of the palace, in order to take it by surprise, to insult the minister, and force the king to abdicate his crown, which, far from giving Ferdinand any title to it, tended to increase his crime, to aggravate his treachery, and to complete his inability to ascend the throne, vacated by violence, perfidy, and faction. Charles IV., outraged, disobeyed, and threatened, had no other alternative suitable to his decorum, and favourable to his vengeance, than to emigrate to France to implore the protection of Bonaparte, in favour his offended royal dignity. Under the nullity of the abdication of Aranjues, and contrary to the will of the people of Spain, all the Bourbons assembled at Bayonne, preferring their personal resentments to the safety of the nation. The emperor of the French availed himself of this opportunity, and having under his controul, and within his influence the whole family of Ferdinand, and several of the first Spanish dignitaries, as well as many substitutes for deputies in the cortes, he obliged Ferdinand to restore the crown to his father, and then the latter to cede it to him, the emperor, in order that he might afterwards confer it on his brother Joseph.

"When the emissaries of the new King reached Caracas, Venezuela was ignorant or knew but partially what had happened. The innocence of Ferdinand, compared to the insolence and despotism of the favourite, Godoy, directed the conduct of Venezuela when the local authorities wavered on the fifteenth of July, 1808; and being left to choose between the alternative of delivering himself up to a foreign power, or of remaining faithful to a king who appeared to be unfortunate and persecuted—the ignorance of what had occurred—triumphed over the interests of the country, and Ferdinand was acknowledged, under the belief, that by this means, the unity of the nation being maintained, she would be saved from the oppression that threatened her, and the king ransomed, of whose virtues, wisdom, and rights we were falsely prepossessed. But less was requisite on the part of those who relied on our good faith to oppress us. Ferdinand, disqualified, and unable legally to obtain the crown—previously announced by the leaders of Spain as dispossessed of his right of succession—incapable of governing in America, and held in bondage by a foreign power—from that time became by illusion a legitimate but unfortunate prince. As many as had the audacity to call themselves his self-created heirs and representatives became as such, and taking advantage of the innate fidelity of the Spaniards of both worlds, and forming themselves into intrusive governments, they appropriated to themselves the sovereignty of the people, under the name of a chimerical king, began to exercise new tyrannies, and, in a word, the commercial junta of Cadiz sought to extend her controul over the whole of Spanish America.

"Such have been the antecedents and consequences of an oath, which, dictated by candour and generosity, and conditionally maintained by good faith, is now arrayed against us, in order to perpetuate those evils which the dear-bought experience of three years has proved to be inseparable to so fatal and ruinous an engagement. Taught as we are by a series of evils, insults, hardships, and ingratitude, during the interval of from the fifteenth of July, 1808, to the fifth of July, 1811, and such as we have already manifested, it became full time that we should abandon it, as a talisman invented by ignorance, and adopted by a misguided fidelity, as from its first existence it has constantly heaped upon us all the evils that accompany an ambiguous state of suspicion and discord. The rights of Ferdinand, and the legitimate representation of them on the part of the intrusive governments of Spain on the one side, demonstrations of compassion and gratitude on the other, have been the two favourite springs alternately played on to support our illusion, to decrease our substance, to prolong our degradation, to multiply our evils, and ignominiously to prepare us to receive that passive fate prepared for us by those who have dealt with us so kindly for three centuries. Ferdinand VII. is the universal watch-word for tyranny, as well in Spain as in America.

"No sooner was that vigilant and suspicious fear, produced among us by the contradictory acts and artificious falsehoods of the strange and short-lived governments which have succeeded one another since the junta of Seville, made known to these governments, than they recurred to a system of apparent liberality towards us, in order to cover with flowers the very snare we had not perceived while covered by the veil of candour, which was at length rent asunder by mistrust. For this purpose of deceit were accelerated, and tumultuously assembled, the cortes, so wished for by the nation, and opposed by the commercial government of Cadiz, but which were at length considered as necessary to restrain the torrent of liberty and justice, which on every side burst the wounds of oppression and iniquity in the new world; it was even still supposed that the habit of obedience, submission, and dependence, would be in us superior to the conviction which at so high a price we had just obtained.

"It is most strange by what kind of deception, fatal to Spain, it has been believed, that the one part of a nation which crosses the ocean, or is born under the tropics, acquires a habit united to servitude, and incapable of bending to the habits of liberty. The effects of this strong-rooted prejudice, as notorious to the world as they are fatal, were at length converted into the welfare of America. Without it Spain would perhaps not have lost the rank she held as a nation, and America in obtaining this blessing would have had to pass through the bitter ordeal of a civil war, more ominous to its promoters than to ourselves.

"Our public papers have already sufficiently demonstrated the defects under which the cortes laboured respecting America, and the measures as illegal as insulting adopted by that body to give us a representation which we could not but object to, even though we were, as the regency had loudly boasted us to be, integral parts of the nation, and had no other complaints to allege against their government than the scandalous usurpation of our rights at a moment when they most required our aid. They have, no doubt, been informed of the reasonings we used with their perfidious envoy, Montenegro, at a time that the former missions being frustrated, the great shipments of newspapers filled with triumphs, reforms, heroic acts, and lamentations, being rendered useless; and the inefficacy of blockades, pacificators, squadrons and expeditions, made known; it was thought convenient to dazzle the self-love of the Americans, by seating near to the throne of the cortes deputies whom we had never named, and who could not be chosen our substitutes by those who created them such, in the same manner as they did others for the provinces in possession of the French, submitting to, and alleging themselves content under their domination. In case this puerile measure of the prolific genius of Spain should not produce a due effect, the envoy (and for this purpose an American, a native of Caracas, was selected) was ordered, that in case the energy of the country, now called rebellion, should prevail against fraternity, (the name given to perfidy), he was to add fuel to the flame already kindled in Coro and Maracaibo, and that discord, again raising her serpent head, might lead the herald of the cortes by the hand under the banner of rebellion through those deceived districts of Venezuela that had not been able to-triumph over their oppressing tyrants.