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Rh these again, deputing members of their own body to form a Central Junta, which was entrusted with the supreme command. They heard this course not only justified by the sages of the nation, but admired by the world, and pronounced by one whose name they had been taught to respect, (Don Gaspar Jŏvĕllānŏs,) "to be the undeniable and strictly natural right of any nation, placed in circumstances similar to those of Spain." They applied this doctrine to themselves, and either could not, or would not, understand the soundness of the reasoning, by which a measure, that was allowed to have been productive of the most beneficial results in the Peninsula, could be constructed into absolute treason on the opposite side of the Atlantic.

Their perception of their own rights was quickened by a deep sense of the grievances under which