Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/55

Rh the finet parts of the ancient Bœtica; but their love of liberty, and unconquerable averion to a foreign ervitude, made them retire, when invaded and overpowered in their ancient eats, into thee mountainous countries, called by the ancients Cantabria. They were governed by counts, ent them by the kings of Oviedo and Leon, until 859, when finding themelves without a chief, becaue Zeno, who commanded them, was made prioner, they roe and took arms to reit Ordogne, on of Alfonus the Third, whoe domination was too evere for them, choe for their chief an iue of the blood-royal of Scotland, by the mother's ide, and on-in-law of Zeno their governor, who having overcome Ordogne, in 870, they choe him for their lord, and his poterity, who bore afterwards the name of Haro, ucceeded him, from father to on, until the king Don Pedro the Cruel, having put to death thoe who were in poeion of the lordhip, reduced them to a treaty, by which they united their country, under the title of a lordhip, with Catile, by which convention the king of Spain is now lord of Bicay. It is a republic; and one of the privileges they have mot infilled on, is not to have a king: another was, that every new lord, at his acceion, hould come into the country in peron, with one of his legs bare, and take an oath to preerve the privileges of the lordhip. The preent king of Spain is the firt who has been complimented with their conent, that the oath hould be adminitered at Madrid, though the other humiliating and indecent ceremony has been long laid aide.

Their olicitude for defence has urrounded with walls all the towns in the ditrict. They are