This mediation had been commenced by lord Wellesley, when the quarrel between the mother country and the colonies was yet capable of adjustment; it was now renewed when it could not succeed. English commissioners were appointed to carry it into execution, the duke of Infantado was to join them on the part of Spain, and at first Mr. Stuart was to have formed part of the commission, Mr. Sydenham being to succeed him at Lisbon, but finally he remained in Portugal and Mr. Sydenham was attached to the commission, whose composition he thus described.
“I do not understand a word of the Spanish language, I am unacquainted with the Spanish character, I know very little of Old Spain, and I am quite ignorant of the state of the colonies, yet I am part of a commission composed of men of different professions, views, habits, feelings, and opinions. The mediation proposed is at least a year too late, it has been forced upon the government of Old Spain, I have no confidence in the ministers who employ me, and I am fully persuaded that they have not the slightest confidence in me.”
The first essential object was to have Bardaxi’s secret article, which required England to join Old Spain if the mediation failed, withdrawn; but as this could not be done without the consent of the Cortez, the publicity thus given would have ruined the credit of the mediation with the colonists. Nor would the distrust of the latter have been unfounded, for though lord Wellesley had offered the guarantee of Great Britain to any arrangement made under her mediation, his successors would not do so!
“They empower us,” said Mr. Sydenham, “to negociate and sign a treaty but will not guarantee the execution of it! My opinion is, that the formal signature of a treaty by plenipotentiaries is in itself a solemn guarantee, if there is good faith and fair dealing in the transaction; and I believe that this opinion will be confirmed by the authority of every writer on the law of nations. But this is certainly not the doctrine of our present ministers, they make a broad distinction between the ratification of a treaty and the intention of seeing it duly observed.”
The failure of such a scheme was inevitable. The Spaniards wanted the commissioners to go first to the Caraccas, where the revolt being full blown, nothing could be effected; the British government insisted that they should go to Mexico, where the dispute had not yet been pushed to extremities. After much useless diplomacy, which continued until the end of the year, the negociation, as Mr. Sydenham had predicted, proved abortive.
In March the new constitution of Spain had been solemnly adopted, and a decree settling the succession of the crown was promulgated. The infant Francisco de Paula, the queen of Etruria, and their respective descendants were excluded from the succession, which was to fall first to the princess Carlotta if the infant don Carlos failed of heirs, then to the hereditary princess of the Two Sicilies, and so on, the empress of France and her descendants being especially excluded. This exhibition of popular power, under the pretext of baffling Napoleon’s schemes, struck at the principle of legitimacy. And when the extraordinary Cortez decided that the ordinary Cortez, which ought to assemble every year, should not be convoked until October 1813, and thus secured to itself a tenure of power for two years instead of one, the discontent increased both at Cadiz and in the provinces, and a close connection was kept up between the malcontents and the Portuguese government, which was then the strong hold of arbitrary power in the Peninsula.
The local junta of Estremadura adopted Carlotta’s claims, in their whole extent, and communicated on the subject, at first secretly with the Portuguese regency, and then more openly with Mr. Stuart. Their scheme was to remove all the acting provincial authorities, and to replace them with persons acknowledging Carlotta’s sovereignty; they even declared that they would abide by the new constitution, only so far as it acknowledged what they called legitimate power, in other words, the princess was to be sole regent. Nevertheless this party was not influenced by Carlotta’s intrigues, for they would not join her agents in any outcry against the British; they acted upon the simple principle of opposing the encroachments of democracy, and they desired to know how England would view their proceedings. The other provinces received the new constitution coldly, and the Biscayens angrily rejected it as opposed to their ancient privileges. In this state of public feeling, the abolition of the Inquisition, a design now openly agitated, offered a point around which all the clergy, and all that the clergy could influence, gathered against the Cortes, which was also weakened by its own factions; yet the republicans gained strength, and they were encouraged by the new constitution established in Sicily, which also alarmed their opponents, and the fear and distrust extended to the government of Portugal.
However amidst all the varying subjects of interest the insane project of reducing the colonies by force, remained a favourite with all parties; nor was it in relation to the colonies only, that these men, who were demanding aid from other nations, in the names of freedom, justice, and humanity, proved themselves to be devoid of those attributes themselves. “The humane object of the abolition of the slave-trade has been frustrated,” said lord Castlereagh, “because not only Spanish subjects but Spanish public officers and governors, in various parts of the Spanish colonies, are instrumental to, and accomplices in the crimes of the contraband slave-traders of Great Britain and America, furnishing them with flags, papers, and solemn documents to entitle them to the privileges of Spanish cruizers, and to represent their property as Spanish.”
With respect to the war in Spain itself, all manner of mischief was abroad. The regular cavalry had been entirely destroyed, and when, with the secret permission of their own government, some distinguished Austrian officers, proffered their services to the regency, to restore that arm, they were repelled. Nearly all the field-artillery had been lost in action, the arsenals at Cadiz were quite exhausted, and most of the heavy guns on the works of the Isla were rendered unserviceable by constant and useless firing; the stores of shot were diminished in an alarming manner, no sums were appropriated to the support of the founderies, and when the British artillery officers made formal representations of this dangerous state of affairs, it only produced a demand of money from England to put the founderies into activity. To crown the whole, Abadia, recalled from Gallicia, at the express desire of sir Henry Wellesley because of his bad conduct, was now made minister of war.