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.