Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/537

 

REPRESENTATION ADDRESSED TO THE CORTES BY THE AUDIENCIA OF MEXICO. — DATED 18TH NOVEMBER, 1813.

exposé, which consists of 270 paragraphs, is one of the most valuable of the state papers which the assiduity of Don Carlos Bustamante has rescued from oblivion. It is too long, and contains too many details of merely local interest, to be read with pleasure, in toto, by persons unacquainted with Mexico.

I have, therefore, preferred making a selection of the passages which throw most light upon the feelings of the country, and the effect produced by the introduction of the Constitution, to attempting a translation, which would have been too long to be inserted in the body of my work, and would hardly have been thought worthy of attention in the Appendix.

The Audiencia assigns as a reason for its interference:

Paragraph 3 — That the laws which recommended to the especial care of the Courts of Audience the preservation of their respective districts, have not been abolished by the Constitution; and that it is consequently the duty of the Tribunal to point out the effects with which the late change of institutions has been attended. — It then proceeds: —

8. — In these moments of calamity, the great Charter of the Spanish people, dear and respectable as it is to all its individuals, is not, and cannot be, carried into effect in New Spain.

9. — The article which concedes the liberty of the press, was only acted upon during two months, nor can it be so at present, without endangering the safety of the state.

2. — The laws respecting elections of Ayuntamientos, — deputies, and members of Provincial Deputations, have likewise not been observed.

3. — The regulations by which the security of the persons and goods of the citizens of towns is confided to the Alcaldes, and Municipal bodies, are also necessarily suspended.

10. — Such, Sire, have been in this country the consequences of the wisest Constitution of the world, and such it was to be foreseen that they would be.

11. — Your Majesty, in giving to Spain a Constitution, freed her from despotism and anarchy. Such was the object of the liberty of the press, — the elections, and other popular forms adopted in that Constitution; and this object was attained in the Peninsula, because the general desires of the people were in unison with those principles of justice which the Constitution sanctioned. Here, the result was exactly the reverse, because patriotism and public virtues were wanting; and because, if the will of the people, corrupted as it now is, prevails, the Independence of