“The” Annual Register: World Events

attached to their faith beyond any other in Europe? This single fact is alone an incontrovertible proof (though multitudes of others might be adduced), that the government of the Cortes was in no respect a national or popular government; it was merely the domination of caballing intriguers, and of-what is the most hateful of all the monsters that afflict civilized society-military demagogues.

The Spanish constitution-bad in itself, and worse by reason of its incompatibility with the habits and feelings of the people-was rendered still more intolerable by the folly and tyranny with which it was administered. The legislation of the Cortes during the last three years, exhibits a greater number of laws breathing the unmitigated wanton spirit of absolute power, and framed, as it were, for the very purpose of chasing justice from the earth, than any equal period (excluding perhaps the reign of the Jacobins in France) in the annals of despotism. When laws are made to consecrate injustice, acts of particular oppression must abound too; and though the number of those who have perished on the scaffold in the course of the Spanish Revolution is not very great, exile and imprisonment have been dealt out with a profuse liberality. What tales could not Ivica and the Canaries tell of the tender mercies of revolutionary authorities? There is scarcely a dungeon in Spain, which could not afford the most damning proofs, that democracy has her Inquisition not less terrible than that of ecclesiastical bigotry. Arbitrary exile and imprisonment are doubtless less shocking to our feelings, than arbitrary executions: but they are more dangerous to the happiness of society, because they are more likely to be carried to an excess. Man recoils from blood. The veriest tyrant will not aim the deadly blow at the head of his victims, unless urged by motives of mighty influence: his hand is withheld by pity, by the anticipations of remorse, by reverence for the sentiments of mankind. But when he consigns to a dungeon the objects of his suspicion, or transports them to a distant region, he has little check, either in his own feelings or in those of others: while the sufferers pine in confinement, or in hopeless separation from all that they hold dear, the author of their misery seems to himself to have done nothing, because what he has done may be undone, and the attention of the world is scarcely attracted to their fate. It is, therefore, to little purpose to tell us, that the Spanish constitutionalists have perpetrated few murders: tell us, rather, how many hundreds and thousands they have banished or imprisoned, without even the decent ceremonial of a trial.

If the Spanish constitution should now be destroyed, we certainly shall not mourn over its fall; though we shall regret, that French invasion should have been the immediate instrument of its ruin. The French, if they succeed, will have destroyed that which was eminently worthy of destruction; but they will erect in its stead what will neither deserve nor be allowed to have a long existence. Their unjustifiable interference can only prolong the troubles of Spain, and remove to a greater distance the period of her settlement. Unhappy country! that hast only a gloomy tyranny, to which to look either back or forward--that canst see on all sides of thee, nothing but disorder and misrule, with scarcely a chance of permanent repose, and still less prospect of repose under a mild and benignant freedom-that hast been awaked from the slumber of the grave, and made to endure all the pangs of resuscitation, merely to be tortured anew, and to undergo once more the agonies of death! O! that some unexpected turn of fortune, some auspicious course of events, may rescue thee from the fate which seems now to be impending over thee, and bless thee with what hitherto thou hast never possessed-a temperate, a reasonable, and an enlightened government, imbued with the spirit of genuine liberty, and diffusing security and happiness around.

One of the mischievous effects of the French invasion of Spain is likely to be, that it may delude the French government into a false idea of its own strength. Most certainly, the throne of the Bourbons still totters on its base. The

annals of this year afford incontestible proof of the prevalence in France of a general idea of the weakness of the government; and, in affairs of state, to have the character of being weak is to be weak, Nor is this weakness the less real, because the present administration seem disposed to strain all their powers to the uttermost, in crushing the germs of liberty among their own countrymen, as well as in reestablishing antiquated tyranny among their neighbours.

In looking round upon such a restless and unsettled state of the world, it is impossible not to cling with more ardent fondness to what we possess at home, and to feel grateful to that superintending Providence, which has, from time to time, blessed us with such a coincidence of fortunate circumstances, as have enabled us alone among the nations of the earth, to build up a system of social freedom, which seems unattainable by mere art or wisdom elsewhere. The speculatist may analyse liberty, as the chemist may reduce the diamond to its constituent charcoal; but as the philosopher endeavours in vain, by all the resources of his laboratory, to convert charcoal into the most precious of precious stones, so poli- ticians, when they set about constructing from the foundation a practical system of freedom, always fail completely. Men have long been labouring, in various parts of the world, to frame institutions which shall be at once orderly, durable, and free; yet nowhere have they succeeded: nowhere can order, permanence, and freedom be found, except under the shadow of the British constitution, and of the scions that have been transplanted from it to the shores of North America.

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