402 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1813. 



which is due to the church. He, 

 on the one hand, acknowledges in 

 his note ihe authority|of the Cortes ; 

 whilst on the other, by means of 

 a secret correspondence, he sows 

 disaffection and insubordination 

 amongst the Spanish clergy. In 

 the character of a public envoy 

 he makes application to the su- 

 preme government, claiming for 

 redress; whilst as an individual 

 prelate he spreads private letters 

 tending to the discredit of that very 

 same government. When address- 

 ing the regency, he conjures the 

 zeal of the ministers of religion ; 

 and when speaking to those mi- 

 nisters, he insults that same reli- 

 gion, by making it a tool to fo- 

 ment the insurbordination which it 

 condemns. With the government 

 he assumes the character of a de- 

 legate of the holy father, who is 

 thereby to be supposed incapable 

 of making an ill use of his mission ; 

 with the subjects of that govern- 

 ment he becomes an intriguer, a 

 secret agent, ready to give them 

 private intelligence of the progress 

 of that disobedience of which he is 

 the promoter and fosterer. As a 

 nuncio of his holiness, he affects an 

 eager desire for the concord of the 

 empire and the priesthood : as an 

 archbishop he strives to burst 

 asunder the only bonds which keep 

 them together. 



What might not the nation fear 

 from this foreign prelate, who, for- 

 getting his dignity and the cha- 

 racter of his mission, transforms the 

 representative of the head of the 

 church into an agent of petty in- 

 terests, very different from those of 

 the primacy of order and jurisdic- 

 tion which belongs to his holi- 

 ness, into a kindler of feuds which 

 could end in nothing but a civil 



war ? The imagination can hardly 

 encompass the mass of evils to 

 which he has exposed our afflicted 

 nation, by such an unheard-of step. 

 The letters imply that he had pre- 

 vious notice of the resistance which 

 the chapter and the vicars of Cadiz 

 were to make — of the object of 

 those dilatory measures which the 

 bishops now resident in this town 

 had agreed to adopt ; as well as of 

 other steps which were in contem- 

 plation, tending to confirm that 

 resistance, and to spread it OTer 

 the kingdom. The plan being one, 

 the interest the same, the measures 

 every where analogous, it evidently 

 appears, that the effects of the co- 

 operation and the support of the 

 reverend nuncio must have been 

 fatal to the representative body, 

 and to the government on which 

 the nation reposes its hopes of in- 

 dependence. 



The Spanish people are fully 

 aware, that the decrees of the 

 Cortes have no other scope but the 

 combined support of the Catholic 

 faith, and the temporal pros- 

 perity of the kingdom. To shake 

 this just conviction, and blast all 

 the hopes which are grafted on it, 

 was the object of those letters, and 

 those injunctions of secrecy, with 

 which the most reverend nuncio 

 supported the schemes of the 

 chapter of Cadiz. This illustri- 

 ous personage, has, therefore, 

 been wanting to the rules of his 

 office, to the consideration due 

 to the national congress, and to 

 the confidence with which a 

 Catholic nation has sheltered him 

 in its bosom — a nation which, now, 

 more than ever, requires the most 

 perfect internal union, if she is to 

 hope for success in her struggle 

 with tyranny. He has, besides, 



