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.