404 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1S14. 



where they are engraved never to 

 be effaced. From the deputies 

 nominated by the Juntas, the 

 Central Junta was formed ; who 

 exercised in my royal name all the 

 powers of Sovereignty from Sept. 

 1808, till Jan. 1810; in which 

 month was established the first 

 Council of Regency, in whom the 

 exercise of that power continued 

 till the 24th of September in the 

 same year : on which day were 

 installed in the isle of Leon the 

 Cortes called General and Extra- 

 ordinary, when 104 Deputies took 

 the oaths, in which they engaged 

 to preserve for me my dominions 

 as their Sovereign ; all which ap- 

 pears from the act certified by the 

 Secretary of State Don Nicholas 

 Maria de Sierra. But these Cortes, 

 assembled in a manner never used 

 in Spain, even in the most arduous 

 cases, and in the most turbulent 

 times of the minorities of Kings, 

 in which the Assembly of Procu- 

 rators were wont to be more nu- 

 merous than in the common and 

 ordinary Cortes, were not called 

 the States of the Nobility and 

 Clergy, although the Central Junta 

 had so ordered, this Decree having 

 been artfully concealed from the 

 Council of Regency, and also the 

 fact that the Junta had assigned to 

 it the Presidency of the Cortes, a 

 prerogative of the Crown which 

 the Regency would not have left 

 to the decision of the Congress, if 

 it had been acquainted therewith. 

 In consequence of this, every 

 thing remained at the disposal of 

 the Cortes : who, on the very day 

 of their installation, and by way 

 of commencement to their acts, 

 despoiled me of m" sovereignty, 

 which the same deputies had only 

 a little before acknowledged, as- 



cribing it nominally to the nation, 

 in order to appropriate it to them- 

 selves, and then, upon such usur- 

 pation, to dictate to the nation such 

 laws as they pleased, imposing 

 upon it the yoke by which it 

 should receive them compulsorily 

 in a new Constitution, which the 

 deputies established without au- 

 thority of the provinces, people, 

 or juntas, and without the know- 

 ledge of those provinces, which 

 were said to be represented by sub- 

 stitutes from Spain and the Indies. 

 This Constitution they sanctioned 

 and published in 1812. This first 

 attack upon the prerogatives of the 

 throne, abusing the name of the 

 nation, became, as it were, the 

 basis of many other attacks which 

 followed it; and in spite of the 

 repugnance of many deputies, per- 

 haps of the majority, they were 

 adopted and raised to the rank of 

 laws, which they called funda- 

 mental, by means of the shouts, 

 threats, and violence of those who 

 attended in the galleries of the 

 Cortes, with which they alarmed 

 and terrified ; and that which was 

 in truth the work of a faction, was 

 clothed with the specious mask of 

 the general will, and for such will, 

 that of a few seditious persons, 

 who in Cadiz and afterwards in 

 Madrid, occasioned affliction to all 

 good citizens, made their own to 

 pass. These facts are so notorious, 

 that there is scarcely any one who 

 is ignorant of them ; and the very 

 Diaries of the Cortes furnish ample 

 proof of them. A mode of making 

 laws so foreign to the Spanish 

 nation, gave occasion to an altera- 

 tion of the good laws under which, 

 in other times, it was respected and 

 happy. In truth, almost all the 

 forms of the ancient constitution of 



