Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/554

 614 APPENDIX. majority of the natives of this country is most decidedly in favour of the Insurrection, and of Independence ; without their frequent invocation of the respectable name of our Sovereign, being any thing more than a veil, with which they endeavour to conceal their criminal projects, as your Excellency may perceive by thousands of papers which have been taken from the Insurgents, some of the most essential of which I will forward by the first opportunity. This fact being once admitted, nothing could be more favourable to the ideas of the disaffected than the Constitution, since, besides securing the impunity of the traitors, either by paralizing the Viceroy, and pre- venting him from acting with energy and decision, or by taking advan- tage of the new judicial system, which affords but too many openings for criminals to elude the arm of the law, the elections have afforded them the means of throwing the whole power into the hands of the factious, and of reducing the Executive to the circle of its immediate dependents, by depriving it of the confidence which it might have reposed in certain corporations, and compelling it rather to defend itself against their attacks, than to look to them for support. Such is the reason of the attachment which the Americans have displayed towards the new insti- tutions : they have discovered that, under their safeguard, they ad- vanced rapidly, and without any sort of risk, towards the great object of their wishes, the Independence of the country, and the proscription of the Europeans, whom they detest. Experience has convinced me of this truth. The Municipalities, the Provincial Deputations, and the Cortes themselves, in as far as the Pro- vinces of Ultramar are concerned, are composed of nothing but Insur- gents ; and some of so decided and criminal a character, that, notwith- standing the restrictions imposed upon me by the decrees of the Cortes, I have been compelled to arrest them, even at the risk of exciting a popu- lar disturbance, fomented by those in whose hands the power is now deposited. At this very moment, two of the most noted Insurgents are on their way to the Peninsula as Deputies to the Cortes, now happily abolished, — Don Josd Maria Alcala, and the Licenciado Don Manuel Cortasar. I cannot describe the bitterness of spirit with which I have seen two such pernicious individuals set out to prescribe laws to our noble Spaniards, and to exercise in the capital their share of an authority, which they will only use in order to prepare, and accelerate tlie ruin of America. At any other time, the data now in my possession would have authorized me to secure the persons of these men, and to proceed after- wards to adduce the proofs of their guilt : but as this was a necessary preliminary under the new system, I have been compelled to allow of the departure of criminals, who, under our old, and more judicious, order of things, would, certainly, not have thus triumphed over justice and the law. Every measure which the Cortes have taken with regard to these