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524 while I am charged with her preservation, although it should be necessary for me, as a last resource, (which, however, I do not think probable,) to put myself at the head of the whole army, and to lay waste the country with fire and sword, until I had destroyed our infamous opponents,and planted in every corner the standard of the Monarch of Spain.

I have extended this letter much beyond what I intended, but my profound loyalty, and my wish to preserve to my August Sovereign this precious part of his dominions, have compelled me to present to his Majesty, through the medium of your Excellency, a detailed account of the state of New Spain. I have done no more than furnish, at present, a mere sketch of the dangers of its position; but considering that this will be sufficient to enable his Majesty to take the most necessary steps at once, I shall reserve for the next opportunity a detailed history of the rebellion, which shall be accompanied by all the documents necessary to confirm what I have stated here, and shall be compelled to state hereafter, respecting the fatal disposition of the natives. In the mean time, I entreat your Excellency to examine my correspondence with the ministers of War, and of Grace and Justice, in which you will find the same ideas and principles which I have expressed in this letter respecting the new system, and my sad forebodings as to the effects which must be produced by its observance in this country.

It now only remains for me to solicit your Excellency to lay at His Majesty's feet the expression of my unspeakable joy at the happy succession of His Majesty to the Throne, and Sovereign rights of his August Predecessors: my eternal adherence to His Majesty's Royal person and rights, and my determination to sacrifice my life, as a soldier and a subject, in their defence, following as Viceroy the conduct which I observed, in the face of the world, at the beginning of the civil disturbances in the year 1810, when I quitted the command of San Luis Potosi, in order to take the field, and snatching from the bosom of the Insurrection those very men who would have been its most formidable support, but have, in fact, done most towards extinguishing it, I immortalized the brave and loyal warriors of the North by dissipating on the fields of Aculco, Guanajuato,