H́nh ảnh trang
PDF
ePub

such funds, sufficient to support for so many years the expenses of the armies?

These provinces profess entire fidelity to Ferdinand the Seventh : they only wish to direct their own affairs themselves, and without the hazard of exposing their means to the rapacity of unfaithful hands; they promise to enter into the coalition against the tyrant, so long as their civil independence is acknowledged. Here your Excellency will observe a means of strengthening the power of the confederation towards a final success, much more secure and conformable to the principles of equity, than by threatening us with punishments and blockades, into subordination which no person has a right to require.

Your Excellency may be firmly assured, that the blockade imposed by General Elio is more prejudicial to the interests of Great Britain, and to Spain herself, than it is to us. If the scrupulous considerations of your nation carry it to dissemble such aggressions, the Junta cannot propose to the people such a species of humiliation. They can perceive in the people nothing else than a determination to resist the audacious attempts of a chief, who, without any other authority than a simple letter from the Secretary Bardaxi, his relation, exhibits himself a hostile Viceroy. It was this circumstance which hastened the aversion they previously bore in their minds, and ruade the people of the eastern province take up arms. They demanded assistance from this Junta, and they have confined their aggressions to investing the walls of Moute-Video.

In this state of things, the armistice which the conciliating disposition of your Excellency proposes, can produce no other effects than to frustrate an enterprise already far advanced; to expose the safety of many patriots to the vengeance of Elio; to excite an universal convulsion among the provinces, and the abandonment of our expectation to fluctuating opinion. This would surely be to act against the principles of our institution, and to raise again the colonial system which our hands destroyed. This Junta entertain too high an idea of the penetration of your Excellency, to attribute your proposal to any other motive than an unacquaintance with occurrences which are obscured by distance.

In respect to the mediation which your Excellency has proposed to remove the differences which subsist between these States and the Peninsula, nothing could be more satisfactory to this Junta than to place their cause in bands so faithful and generous as those of the British Cabinet. The good faith which characterizes it, and the identity of its interests with ours, are circumstances which assure us of its fidelity. But the Junta cannot discover reasons to authorise them at present to avail themselves of such mediation.

The Peninsula is no more than a part of the Spanish monarchy, and that so maimed, that it would be no small concession to put it upon an equality with America. It, therefore, follows, from this principle, that the Peninsula cannot hold any authority over America, nor this over that. Were the English Cabinet to act the part of

an

an impartial mediator, it would be a precise acknowledgment of the independence of the two States. On the other hand, were the British Cabinet possessed of an idea of our inferiority, it would not be surprising that the result of a negociation would be to grant us much less by way of favour than we deserve in justice. Therefore, until we can know the opinion of the British nation, all ulterior proceedings should be suspended.

In addition, your Excellency combines your mediation with the armistice; and, should a negociation take place, General Elio would continue to hold all the authority of Viceroy, wherewith he is invested by the Junta of Cadiz, at least in that place which he now occupies; but this would involve a contradiction in principles: Elio, and the illegitimate power from which he derives his authority, would remain triumphant over our rights before the termination of the dispute.

The unlimited confidence which this Junta has in the pure intentions of your Excellency, convinces us that you have no other object in view than to unite the political ties which subsist in common betwixt both nations; but your Excellency may rest assured, that if the state of our negociations do not permit us to adhere to them, our friendship towards Great Britain shall not be less firm, nor our consideration of your Excellency less high.

Paris, June 16.-Speech of the French Emperor to the Legislative Body.

Gentlemen Deputies of Depart

ments to the Legislative Body, The peace concluded with the Emperor of Austria has been since cemented by the happy alliance I have contracted: the birth of the King of Rome has fulfilled my wishes, and satisfies my people with respect to the future.

The affairs of religion have been too often mixed with and sacrificed to the interests of a state of the third order. If half Europe has separated from the church of Rome, we may attribute it specially to the contradiction which has never ceased to exist between the truths and the principles of religion which belong to the whole universe, and the pretensions and interests which regarded only a very small corner of Italy. I have put an end to this scandal for ever. I have united Rome to the Empire. I have given palaces to the Popes at Rome and at Paris; if they have at heart the interests of religion, they will often sojourn in the centre of the affairs of Christianity. It was thus that St. Peter preferred Rome to an abode even in the Holy Land.

Holland has been united to the empire; she is but an emanation of it; without her the empire would not be complete.

The principles adopted by the English government not to recog

God preserve your Excellency nize the neutrality of any flag,

may years.

THE MEMBERS OF THE JUNTA.

Buenos Ayres, May 18, 1811,

To his Excellency

Lord Strangford, &c.

have obliged me to possess myself of the mouths of the Ems, the Weser, and the Eibe, and have rendered an interior communication with the Baltic indispensable

to

to me. It is not my territory that I wished to increase, but my maritime means.

America is making efforts to cause the freedom of her flag to be recognized. I will second her. I have nothing but praises to give to the Sovereigns of the Confederation of the Rhine.

The Union of the Valais has been foreseen ever since the Act of Mediation, and considered as necessary to conciliate the interests of Switzerland with the interests of France and Italy.

The English bring all the passions into play. One time they suppose France to have all the designs that could alarm other powers, designs which she could have put in execution if they had entered into her policy. At another time they make an appeal to the pride of nations in order to excite their jealousy. They lay hold of all circumstances which arise out of the unexpected events of the times in which we live. It is war over every part of the continent that can alone ensure their prosperity. I wish for nothing that is not in the treaties I have concluded. I will never sacrifice the blood of my people to interests that are not immediately the interests of my empire. I flatter myself that the peace of the continent will not be disturbed.

The King of Spain is come to assist at this last solemnity. I have given him all that was necessary and proper to unite the interests and hearts of the different people of his provinces. Since 1809, the greater part of the strong places in Spain have been taken after memorable sieges. The insurgents have been beat in a great

number of pitched battles. England has felt that this war was approaching its termination, and that intrigues and gold were no longer sufficient to nourish it. She found herself, therefore, obliged change the nature of it, and from an auxiliary she is become a principal. All she has of troops of the line have been sent into the Peninsula. England, Scotland, and Ireland are drained, English blood has at length flowed in torrents, in several actions glorious to the French arms.***** This conflict against Carthage, which seemed as if it would be decided in fields of battle, on the ocean, or beyond the seas, will henceforth be decided in the plains of Spain! When England shall be exhausted-when she shall at last have felt the evils which for twenty years she has with so much cruelty poured upon the continent-when half her families shall be in mourning-then shall a peal of thunder put an end to the affairs of the Peninsula, the destinies of her armies, and avenge Europe and Asia by finishing this second Punic war.

Gentlemen Deputies of Depart

ments to the Legislative Body, I have ordered my minister to lay before you the accounts of 1809 and 1810. It is the object for which I have called you together. You will see in them the prosperous state of my finances. Though I have placed within three months 100 millions extraordinary at the disposal of my ministers of war, to defray the expenses of new armaments which then appeared necessary, I find myself in the fortunate situation of not having any new taxes to impose upon my people. I shall not increase any

tax:

tax: I have no want of any aug- tries; whose condition has been mentation in the imposts.

[ocr errors]

made wretched by the very means which should have promoted their felicity throwing a veil over three centuries of Spanish domi

Declaration of Independence of the nion in America, we shall confine

Province of Venezuela.

In the Name of the Most High. We, the representatives of the federal provinces of Caraccas, Cumana, Barinas, Margalta, Barcelona, Merida, and Truxillo, -constituting the confederation of Venezuela, on the southern continent of America, in Congress assembled; considering, that we have been in the full entire possession of our natural rights since the 19th of April, 1810, which we re-assumed in consequence of the transaction at Bayonne, the abdication of the Spanish throne, by the conquest of Spain, and the accession of a new dynasty, es'tablished without our consent: while we avail ourselves of the rights of men, which have been held from us by force for more than three centuries, and to which we are restored by the political revolutions in human affairs, think it becoming to state to the world the reasons by which we are called to the free exercise of the sovereign authority.

We deem it unnecessary to insist upon the unquestionable right which every conquered country holds to restore itself to liberty and independence: we pass over in a generous silence, the long series of afflictions, oppressions, and privations, in which the fatal law of conquest has indiscriminately Vinvolved the discoverers, conquerors, and settlers, of these coun

ourselves to the narration of recent and well-known facts, which prove how much we have been afflicted; and that we should not be involved in the commotions, disorders, and conquests which have divided Spain.

The disorders in Europe had increased the evils under which we before suffered, by obstructing complaints, and frustrating the means of redress; by authorising the governors placed over us by Spain, to insult and oppress us with impunity, leaving us without the protection or support of the laws.

It is contrary to the order of nature, impracticable in relation to the government of Spain, and has been most afflicting to America, that territories so much more extensive, and a population incomparably more numerous, should be subjected and dependant on a peninsular corner of the European continent.

The cession and abdication made at Bayonne, the transactions at the Escurial and at Aranjuez, and the orders issued by the Imperial Lieutenant, the Marshal Duke of Berg, to America, authorised the exercise of those rights, which till that period the Americans had sacrificed to the preservation and integrity of the Spanish nation.

The people of Venezuela, were the first who generally acknowledged, and who preferred that in~ tegrity;

tegrity; never forsaking the interests of their European brethren, while there remained the least prospect of salvation.

America had acquired a new existence; she was able and was bound to take charge of her own safety and prosperity; she was at Jiberty to acknowledge or to reject the authority of a King who was so little deserving of that power as to regard his personal safety more than that of the nation over which he had been placed.

All the Bourbons who concurred in the futile stipulations of Bayonne, having withdrawn from the Spanish territory contrary to the will of the people, abrogated, dishon ured, and trampled upon all the sacred obligations which they had contracted with the Spaniards of both worlds, who with their blood and treasures had placed them on the throne, in opposition to the efforts of the house of Austria: such conduct has rendered them unfit to rule over a free people, whom they disposed of like a gang of slaves.

The intrusive government, which have arrogated to themselves the authority which belongs only to the national representation, treacherously availed themselves of the known good faith, the distance, and effects which ignorance and oppression had produced among the Americans, to direct their passions against the new dynasty which had been imposed upon Spain; and, in opposition to their own principles, kept up the illusion amongst us in favour of Ferdinand, but only in order to baffle our rational hopes, and to make us with greater impunity their prey they held forth to us pro

mises of liberty, equality, and fraternity, in pompous discourses, the more effectually to conceal the snare which they were insidiously laying for us by an inefficient and degrading shew of representation.*

As soon as the various forms of the Spanish government were overthrown, and others had been successively substituted, and imperious necessity had taught Venezuela to look to her own safety, in order to support the King, and afford an asylum to their European brethren against the calamities by which they were menaced, all their former services were disregarded; new measures were adopted against us, and the very steps taken for the preservation of the Spanish government were branded with the titles of insurrection, perfidy, and ingratitude; but only because the door was closed against a monopoly of pow er, which they had expected to perpetuate in the name of a King whose dominion was imaginary.

Notwithstanding our moderation, our generosity, and the purity of our intentions, and in opposition to the wishes of our brethren in Europe, we were declared to the world in a state of blockad; hostilities were commenced against us; agents sent among us to excite revolt, and arm us against each other; whilst our national character was traduced, and foreign nations excited to make

[blocks in formation]
« TrướcTiếp tục »