State of Lima in 1811....Constitution proclaimed....Some Effects
of....Wishes of the Inhabitants of Lima....Manifest of Venezuela.
On my arrival in Lima I found the same spirit of revolutionary
principles disseminated among all ranks of creoles, excepting some few
individuals who possessed lucrative employments under the government.
The Viceroy Abascal endeavoured to check the spirit of rebellion by the
mildest measures possible, avoiding all acts of persecution; he
established a regiment, called de la Concordia, of concord, from the
respectable inhabitants of the city, constituted himself the colonel of
it, and nominated the officers from among the more leading individuals,
whether Spaniards or creoles: this for a short time lulled the spirit of
insurrection. The victory of Guaqui, gained by General Goyoneche over
the army of Buenos Ayres, was welcomed with feasts and rejoicings; but
the scarcity of wheat, the ports of Chile being closed, began to be very
apparent.
In 1812 the constitutional government was proclaimed, and copies of the
constitution of the Spanish monarchy were the only books that were read,
consulted, and studied by all classes. The formation of a constitutional
corporation, cabildo, and the election of constitutional alcaldes,
caused some uproar in the city; but the measures became alarming to the
Spaniards when the election of deputies for the cortes took place. The
Spaniards, accustomed to consider the natives as inferiors, and almost
as intruders in their own country, had now to brook their contempt in
return, to bear with their opposition, and sometimes with their
reproaches. The poll was conducted in the patio, or principal cloister
of the convent of La Merced; several collegians of San Carlos placed
themselves on the hustings, and, according to the Ley de Partido, no
native of Spain is permitted to reside in the colonies without a special
license of the Casa de Contratacion of Seville, or in the employ of the
government, and the latter were declared by the constitution, tit. 2,
cap. IV. art. 24, to have no vote. Thus as no Spaniards in Lima could
produce a license, or passport, they were not allowed to vote; and this
excited in them the most frantic rage and chagrin. One Spaniard
presented himself with his passport, and insultingly advanced towards
the hustings to vote; but one of the collegians, looking over the
paper, found that the voter was a native of the Canary Islands, which
being African islands, and all Africans, or descendants of Africans,
being declared by art. 22, tit. 2, cap. IV. of the constitution, as not
having an elective vote, unless they had obtained a letter of
denizenship from the cortes, he was obliged to retire amid the shouts of
the creoles, and the curses against the cortes of the Spaniards.
Nothing could possibly be more favourable to the colonies than the
publication of a constitutional form of government, and the liberty of
the press, as it was sanctioned by the cortes. The restrictions were
such as would have produced a clamour in England, but to a slave an hour
of rest is an hour of perfect freedom, and to men whose pens had been
chained by political trammels and inquisitorial anathemas, a relief from
such restrictions was hailed as an absolute immunity. Those colonies
that still remained faithful to the mother country had an opportunity of
reading the periodical papers, a thing unknown at this time, unless we
except the government gazette; and although such news as was
unfavourable to the Spanish system did not appear in print, yet the
barefaced falsehoods of the old ministerial paper were checked in their
exaggerations, by the appearance of authentic intelligence in the new
papers, and the public were informed of such facts as had taken place:
they were apprised of the establishment of republican governments in
Mexico, Colombia, Buenos Ayres, and Chile—facts that would have been
disguised by the old established authorities, and the people would have
been stigmatized by the name of banditti, of discontented indians, a
gang of traitors, or a horde of highwaymen and freebooters.
The inhabitants of Lima wished for a change in their form of government
as ardently perhaps as those of any other part of America; and for not
having established one, they have been considered by many as a race of
effeminate listless cowards, and have been reported as such—but most
undeservedly. Although in a cause adverse to their own interest, for
many years they sustained the brunt of the war against all the forces
that could be brought to the field by those whom they were taught to
consider as enemies. Soldiers are instructed by the precepts and the
examples of their commanders, and rarely reflect on what is right or
wrong; otherwise history would not present us with such numberless
instances of armed forces acting in open hostility against their very
homes, their friends, and their parents; wherever a city is garrisoned
by a military force, the inhabitants as well as the soldiers must submit
to the will of the commanders. Such was the state of Lima: many of the
soldiers it is true were Limeños, but many were from different parts of
Peru, and nearly the whole of the officers were Spaniards, and those who
were not were under the suspicious eye of jealous masters.
At first, the several provinces that revolted, and which had established
new governments, most solemnly declared, that it was not their intention
to separate from the crown of Spain, but to govern themselves in such a
manner as would secure to that crown the possession of America. The
Regency of Spain, however, invested with the authority to govern the
peninsula, insisted on the prerogative of governing the American
colonies, forgetting that the famous grant of America made by Pope
Alexander VI. annexed America to the crowns of Castile and Arragon, and
not to the nation nor to any representative body belonging to that
nation. Every individual that was apprehended during the first years of
commotion was treated as a traitor. At Quito the words "constituted
authorities" contained in the oath which was administered were
converted into high treason, and there is no doubt but Arrechaga would
have solicited the sentence of capital punishment on all those who had
taken it, had not their number included many of his friends.
Declarations of independence, and manifestos containing the motives for
at once separating from the mother country, now began to circulate among
the natives of Peru; and although some of them contained exaggerations,
and the government of Lima became possessed of copies of them, yet such
was the apathy or the timidity of the chiefs, that no attempt at
refutation was ever made. The following are translations of papers from
Venezuela, which fully express all the grievances of which the
Hispano-Americans complained. They were drawn up for the purpose of
instilling into the minds of their countrymen a determination to shake
off those grievances, and to convince the world at large that the
insurrection of the Spanish colonies had become a matter of necessity
and not of choice:
"Manifesto made to the world by the confederation of Venezuela in South
America, of the reasons on which it founds its absolute independence of
Spain, and of every other foreign power. Done by the general Congress of
the United States, and ordered to be published.
"Spanish America, condemned for more than three centuries to exist only
for the purpose of increasing the political preponderance of Spain,
without the least influence in, or participation of her greatness,
would, according to the order of events in which she had no other part
than that of sufferance, have been the victim and the sacrifice of the
disorder, corruption, and conquest, which have disorganized the nation
her conqueror, if the instinct of self-preservation had not dictated to
the Americans, that the moment of action had arrived, and that it was
time to reap the fruits of three centuries of patience and forbearance.
"If the discovery of the new world was to the human race an occurrence
highly interesting, the regeneration of this same world, degraded from
that period by oppression and servitude, will not be less so. America,
raising herself from the dust, and throwing off her chains without
passing through the political gradations of other countries, will in her
turn triumph over the world, without deluging it in blood, without
enslaving it, without brutifying it. A revolution most useful to mankind
will be that of America, when she shall constitute her own authorities
and govern herself, opening her arms to receive those people of Europe
who may be trampled on by policy, wish to fly from the evils of war, or
escape the persecution and the fury of party. The inhabitants of one
hemisphere will then cross the ocean to the other in search of peace and
tranquillity; not with the lust nor perfidy of conquest, like the heroes
of the sixteenth century—as friends, not as tyrants: as men willing to
obey, not as lords to command—not to destroy, but to save—not as
ravenous tigers, but as human beings, who, horror-struck at the account
of our past misfortunes, were taught to estimate them by their own—who
will not convert their reason into a spirit of blind persecution, nor
wish to stain our annals with blood and misery. Then shall navigation,
geography, astronomy, industry, and trade perfected by the discovery of
America, though until now the source of her debasement, be converted
into the means of accelerating, consolidating, and making more perfect
the happiness of the two worlds.
"This is not a flattering dream, but the homage of reason to prudence,
whose ineffable wisdom designed that one part of the human race should
not groan under the tyranny of another; consequently, the great fiat of
what should precede the dissolution of the world could not take place
before one part of its inhabitants had enjoyed their inherent rights.
Every thing has long been preparing for this epoch of felicity and
consolation. In Europe the shock and the fermentation of opinions, the
contempt and the inversion of the laws; the profanation of those bonds
which ought to have held states together; the luxury of courts, the
cessation of industry, the consequent unproductiveness of lands, the
oppression of virtue, and the triumph of vice accelerated the progress
of evil in one world, while the increase of population in America, of
the wants of foreign countries dependent on her, the development of
agriculture in a new and fertile soil, the germ of industry under a
beneficent climate, the elements of science under a privileged
organization, the means of a rich and prosperous trade, and the strength
of a political adolescence, all, all contributed to accelerate the
progress of good in the other.
"Such was the advantageous alternative that enslaved America presented
to her mistress, Spain, on the other side of the ocean, when oppressed
by the weight of every evil, and undermined by every principle
destructive to society, America called upon her to ease her of her
chains that she might fly to her succour. Fortunately prejudice
triumphed, the genius of evil and disorder seized on the government,
goaded pride usurped the seat of prudence; ambition triumphed over
liberality, and substituting deceit and perfidy for generosity and
integrity, those very arms were turned against us which we ourselves
used when impelled by fidelity and good faith; we taught Spain herself
the way to resist her enemies, under the banners of a presuming king,
unfit to reign, and void of all title except the generous compassion of
the people and his own misfortunes.
"Venezuela was the first in the new world to pledge to Spain that
generous aid which she considered as a necessary homage; Venezuela was
the first to pour the consoling balm of friendship and fraternity into
her wounds when afflicted; Venezuela was the first that knew the
disorders which threatened the destruction of Spain; she was the first
to provide for her own safety, without severing the bonds that linked
her to the mother country; the first to feel the effects of her
ambitious ingratitude; she was the first on whom war was declared by her
brethren; and she is now the first to recover and declare her
independence and civil dignity in the new world. In order to justify
this measure of necessity and of justice, she considers it an incumbent
duty to present to the universe the reasons which have urged her to the
same, that her honour and principles may not be doubted, nor endangered
when she comes to fill the high rank which Providence restores her to.
"All those persons who are aware of our determinations know what was our
fate previous to the late inversion of things, which alone dissolved our
engagements with Spain, even granting that these were legal and
equitable. It would be superfluous to present again to impartial Europe
the misfortunes and vexations she has so often had cause to lament, at a
time when we were not allowed to do so; neither is it necessary to
assert the injustice of our dependence and degradation, when every
nation has viewed as an insult to political equity, that Spain
unpeopled, corrupted, and plunged into a state of sloth and indolence by
the measures of a despotic government, should have exclusively usurped
from the industry and activity of the rest of the continent, the
precious and incalculable resources of a world constituted in the fief
and monopoly of a small portion of the other.
"The interest of Europe cannot oppose the liberty of one quarter of the
globe, which now discovers itself to the interest of the other three;
yet a mere peninsula is found to oppose the interests of its government
to those of its nation, in order to raise the old hemisphere against the
new one, since the impossibility of oppressing it alone for any longer
period is now visible. In opposition to these endeavours, more fatal to
our tranquillity than to our prosperity, we will disclose to the world
the causes which operated on our conduct on the fifteenth of July, 1808,
and the acts that have wrested from us the resolutions of the nineteenth
of April, 1810, and of the fifth of July, 1811. These three epochs will
form the first period of the glories of regenerated Venezuela, when the
impartial pen of history shall record the first lines of the political
existence of South America.
"Our manifests and public papers testified almost all the reasons that
influenced our resolutions, as well as our designs, and all the just and
decorous means that were employed to realize them; it might be supposed
that an exact and impartial comparison of our conduct with that of the
late governments of Spain would of itself suffice to justify not only
our moderation, not only our measures of security, not only our
independence, but also even the declaration of an irreconcilable enmity
to those who directly or indirectly have contributed to the unnatural
system now adopted against us. Nothing in truth should we have to do if
good faith had been the spring of action, used by the partisans of
oppression against liberty; but, as the last analysis of our
misfortunes, we cannot extricate ourselves from the condition of slaves
without being branded with the disgraceful epithets of ungrateful
rebels. Let those therefore listen and judge us who have no part in our
misfortunes, and who are now desirous of having none in our disputes, in
order not to augment the prejudices of our enemies, and let them not
lose sight of the solemn act of our just, necessary, and modest
emancipation.
"Caracas was apprised of the scandalous scenes which took place at the
Escurial and Aranjues at a time when she was already convinced of what
were her rights, and the state in which they were placed by those
extraordinary occurrences; but the habit of obedience on the one hand,
the apathy that despotism had produced on the other, and in fine our
fidelity and good faith, were at that moment paramount to every other
feeling. After the communication of Murat, the kingly substitute of
Joseph Bonaparte, had reached the capital of the monarchy, the
authorities did not even hesitate respecting the reception of it, the
people only thought of being faithful, consistent, and generous,
without premeditating on the evils to which this noble and gallant
conduct would expose them. Without any other view than that of honour,
Venezuela refused to follow the opinions of the leading characters in
Madrid, some of whom, in support of the orders of the French Regent of
the kingdom, exacted of us the oath of allegiance to the new king;
others declared and published that Spain had received a new existence
since her old authorities abandoned her, since the cession made by the
Bourbons and the entrance of the new dynasty; that they had recovered
their absolute independence and liberty, and that they offered the same
alluring terms to the Americans, who by the same means might procure the
same rights. But the first step we took for our own security convinced
the junta central that there was something in us besides habits and
prejudices, and they began to change their tune respecting liberality
and sincerity; they perfidiously adopted the talisman Ferdinand at first
practised in good faith; they suppressed, but with cunning and suavity,
the plain and legal project of Caracas in 1808 to form a junta, and to
imitate the representative system of the governments of Spain; and they
began to set up a new species of despotism under the factitious name of
a king, acknowledged only from a principle of generosity, and destined
to oppress and tyrannise us by those who had usurped the sovereignty.
"New governors and judges initiated in the new system projected by Spain
against America, decided in the support of it at our expense, and
provided with instructions for even the last political change which
might occur in the other hemisphere, were the consequences resulting
from the surprize that our unparalleled and unexpected generosity caused
to the central junta. Ambiguity, artifice, and disorder were the springs
employed to keep in motion this short-lived administration: as they saw
their empire exposed and tottering, they wished to gain in one day what
had enriched their ancestors for many years; and as their authority was
backed by that of their parasites, all their endeavours were directed to
the support of each other under the shadow of our illusion and good
faith. No statute or law against these plans was effective; and every
measure that favoured the new system of political freemasonry was to
have the force of law, however opposed it might be to the principle of
equity and justice. After the declaration of the Captain-general Emparan
made to the audiencia, that in Caracas there was no other law nor
will but his own, and this fully demonstrated in several arbitrary acts
and excesses, such as placing on the bench of the judge the King's
accuser-general; intercepting and opening the papers sent by Don Pedro
Gonsales Ortega to the central junta; expulsing from the provinces this
same public functionary, as well as the captain, Don Francisco
Rodrigues, and the assessor of the consulate, Don Miguel Jose Sanz, who
were all embarked for Cadiz or Porto Rico, as well as sentencing to
labour in the public works without any previous form of trial a
considerable number of men, who were dragged from their homes under the
epithet of vagrants; revoking and suspending the resolutions of the
royal audience, when they were according to his caprice and absolute
will, after naming a recorder without the consent of the corporation;
creating and causing the assessor to be received without either title or
authority for the same, after he had supported his pride and his
ignorance in every excess; after many scandalous disputes between the
audience and the corporation, and after all the law characters had been
reconciled to the plan of these despots, in order that these might be
more inexpugnable to us, it was agreed to organize and carry into
effect the project of espionage and duplicity.
"Of all this there remains authentic testimony in our archives,
notwithstanding the vigilance with which these were examined by the
friends of the late authorities: there exists in Cuenca an order of the
Spanish government to excite discord among the nobles and among the
different branches of American families. There are besides many written
and well-known documents of corruption, gambling, and libertinism
promoted by Guevara, for the purpose of demoralizing the country; and no
one can ever forget the collusions and subornings publicly used by the
judges, and proved in the act of their residencia.
"Under these auspices the defeats and misfortunes of the Spanish armies
were concealed. Pompous and imaginary triumphs over the French on the
peninsula were forged and announced; the streets were ordered to be
illuminated, gunpowder was wasted in salutes, the bells announced the
rejoicings, and religion was prostituted by the chanting Te Deums and
other public acts, as if to insult Providence, and invoke a perpetuity
of the evils we groaned under. In order to allow us no time to analyze
our own fate, or discover the snares laid for us, conspiracies were
invented, parties and factions were forged in the imagination of our
oppressors, every one was calumniated who did not consent to be
initiated in the mysteries of perfidy; fleets and emissaries from France
were figured as being on our seas, and residing among us; our
correspondence with the neighbouring colonies was circumscribed and
restricted; our trade received new fetters, and the whole was for the
purpose of keeping us in a state of continual agitation, that we might
not fix our attention on our own situation and interests.
"When our forbearance was once alarmed, and our vigilance awakened, we
began to lose all confidence in the governments of Spain and their
agents; through the veil of their intrigues and machinations we
perceived the horrid futurity that awaited us; the genius of truth,
elevated above the dense atmosphere of oppression and calumny, pointed
out to us with the finger of impartiality the true fate of Spain, the
disorders of her governments, the unavailing energy of her inhabitants,
the formidable power of her enemies, and the groundless hopes of her
salvation. Shut up in our own houses, surrounded by spies, threatened
with infamy and banishment, scarcely daring to bewail our own
situation, or even secretly to complain against our vigilant and cunning
enemies; the consonance of our blinded sighs exhaled in the moments of
the most galling oppression, at length gave uniformity to our sentiments
and united our opinions. Shut up within the walls of our own houses, and
debarred from all communication with our fellow-citizens, there was
scarcely an individual in Caracas who did not think that the moment of
being for ever free, or of sanctioning irrevocably a new and horrid
slavery, had arrived.
"Every day discovered more and more the nullity of the acts of Bayonne,
the invalidity of the rights of Ferdinand, and of all the Bourbons who
were privy to the arrangements; the ignominy with which they delivered
up as slaves those who had placed them on the throne in opposition to
the house of Austria; the connivance of the head functionaries in Spain
to the plans of the new dynasty; the fate that these same plans prepared
for America, and the necessity of forming some resolution that might
shield the new world from the calamities which from its relations with
the old were about to visit it. All saw their treasures buried in the
unfathomable disorders of the peninsula; they wept for the blood of
Americans spilt in defence of the enemies of America, in order to
support the slavery of their own country. Notwithstanding the vigilance
of the tyrants, all saw the very interior of Spain, where they beheld
nothing but disorder, corruption, factions, misfortunes, defeats,
treacheries, dispersed armies, whole provinces in the hands of the enemy
and their disciplined troops, and at the head of all a weak and
tumultuary government formed out of such rare elements.
"Dismay was the general and uniform impression observed in the
countenances of the people of Venezuela by the agents of oppression sent
from Spain to support at any hazard the infamous cause of their
constituents; a word might cause proscription, or a discourse banishment
to the author; and every attempt to do in America what was done in
Spain, if it did not shed the blood of the Americans, it was at least
sufficient to occasion the ruin, infamy, and desolation of many
families, as may be seen by the act of proscription of several officers
and citizens of rank and probity, decreed on the twentieth of March,
1810, by Emparan.[1] Such a miscalculation could not fail to produce or
multiply the convulsions, to augment the popular reaction, to prepare
the combustible, and dispose it in such a manner that the least spark
would kindle it, and create a blaze that would consume, and even efface
every vestige of so hard and melancholy a condition. Spain needy and
almost desolate, her fate dependent on the generosity of America, and
almost in the act of being blotted out from the list of nations,
appeared as if transported back to the sixteenth or seventeenth
centuries, she again began to conquer America with arms more destructive
than iron or lead; every day gave birth to some new proof of the fate
that awaited us, a fate that would place us in the sad alternative of
being sold to a foreign power, or obliged to groan for ever under a
fresh and irrevocable bondage, whilst we alone were expectant on the
happy moment that might bring our opinions into action, and join us in
such a manner that we could express them, and support them.
"Amidst the sighs and imprecations of general despair, the entrance of
the French in Andalusia, the dissolution of the central junta brought
about by the effects of public execration, and the abortive institution
of another protean government, under the name of regency, reached our
ears. This was announced under ideas more liberal, and on perceiving the
efforts of the Americans to avail themselves of the opportunity which
the vices and nullities of so strange a government presented to them,
they endeavoured to strengthen the illusion by brilliant promises, by
theories barren of reform, and by announcing to us that our fate was no
longer in the hands of viceroys, ministers, or governors; at the same
time that all their agents received the strictest orders to watch over
our conduct, and even over our opinions, and not to suffer these to
exceed the limits traced by the eloquence that gilded the chains forged
in the captious and cunning promise of emancipation.
"At any other period this would have sufficed to deceive the Americans,
but the junta of Seville, as well as the central junta, had already gone
too far in order to remove the bandage from our eyes, and what was then
combined, meditated, and polished to subject us again with phrases and
hyperboles, only served to redouble our vigilance, to collect our
opinions, and to establish a firm and unshaken resolution to perish
rather than remain any longer the victims of cabal and perfidy. The eve
of that day on which our religion celebrates the most august mystery of
the redemption of the human race, was that designated by Providence to
be the commencement of the political redemption of America. On Holy
Thursday, April nineteenth, 1810, the colossus of despotism was thrown
down in Venezuela, the empire of law proclaimed, and the tyrants
expelled with all the suavity, moderation, and tranquillity that they
themselves have confessed, so much so in fact, as to have filled with
admiration of, and friendship for us the rest of the impartial world.
"All sensible persons would have supposed that a nation recovering its
rights, and freeing itself from its oppressors, would in its blind fury
have broken down every barrier that might place it directly or
indirectly within the reach of the influence of those very governments
that had hitherto caused its misfortunes, and its oppression. Venezuela,
faithful to her promises, did no more than ensure her own security in
order to comply with them, and if with one strong and generous hand she
deposed the authors of her misery and her slavery, with the other she
placed the name of Ferdinand VII. at the head of her new government,
swore to maintain his rights, promised to acknowledge the unity and
integrity of the Spanish nation, opened her arms to her European
brethren, offered them an asylum in their misfortunes and calamities,
equally hated the enemies of the Spanish name, solicited the generous
alliance of England, and prepared to take her share of the success or
misfortunes of the nation from whom she could and ought to be separated.
"But it was not this that the regency exacted of us, when it declared us
free in its theories, it subjected us in practice to a small and
insignificant representation, believing that those to whom it considered
nothing was due, would be content to receive whatever was granted to
them by their masters. Under so liberal a calculation the regency was
desirous of keeping up the illusion, to pay us with words, promises, and
inscriptions for our long slavery, and for the blood and treasure we had
expended in Spain. We were fully aware how little we had to expect from
the policy and intrusive agents of Ferdinand, we were not ignorant that
if we were not to be dependent on viceroys, ministers, and governors,
with greater reason we could not be subject to a king, a captive and
without the rights of authority; nor to a government null and
illegitimate, nor to a nation incapable of holding sway over another,
nor to a peninsular corner of Europe, almost wholly occupied by a
foreign force. Nevertheless, desirous of effecting our own freedom by
the means of generosity, moderation, and civic virtues, we acknowledged
the imaginary rights of the son of Maria Louisa, we respected the
misfortunes of the nation, and officially announced to the regency that
we disowned, that we promised not to separate from Spain so long as she
maintained a legal government, established according to the will of the
nation, and in which America had that part given to her, required by
justice, necessity, and the political importance of her territory.
"If three hundred years of former servitude do not suffice to authorize
our emancipation, there has been sufficient cause in the conduct of the
governments which arrogated to themselves the sovereignty of a conquered
nation, which never could have any property in America declared an
integral part of the same, whilst they attempted to involve it in
conquest. If the governors of Spain had been paid by her enemies, they
could not have done more against the felicity of the nation, bound in
its close union and correspondence with America. With the greatest
contempt of our importance, and of the justice of our claims when they
could not deny us the appearance of a representation, they subjected it
to the despotic influence of their agents, over our municipalities, to
whom the election was committed; and whilst Spain allowed even for the
provinces in possession of the French, the Canaries and Balearic
islands, one representative for each 50,000 souls, freely elected by
these, in America a 1,000,000 scarcely sufficed to have the right of one
representative, named by the Viceroy or captain-general, under the
signature of the municipality.
"At the same time that we, strong in the right of our own justice and
the moderation of our proceedings, hoped that if the reasons we alleged
to the regency to convince them of the necessity of our resolution did
not triumph, at least that the generous disposition with which we
promised not to become the enemy of our oppressed and unfortunate
brethren would be successful, dispositions which the new government of
Caracas was desirous should not be limited to barren promises; and the
unprejudiced and impartial world will know, that Venezuela has passed
the time which intervened between April 19th, 1810, to July 5th, 1811,
in a bitter and painful alternative of acts of ingratitude, insults, and
hostilities on the part of Spain; and of generosity, modesty, and
forbearance on ours. This period is the most interesting of the history
of our revolution, so much so, that its events present a contrast so
favourable to our cause, that it cannot have failed to gain over for us
the impartial decision of those nations that have no interest in
disparaging our efforts.
"Previous to the result of our political transformation, we received
daily new motives sufficiently strong for each to have caused us to do
what we have now done, after three centuries of misery and degradation.
In every vessel that arrived from Spain new agents with fresh
instructions came to strengthen those who supported the cause of
ambition and perfidy. For the very same ends, those Europeans who wished
to return to Spain, and assist in the war against the French, received a
refusal to their request. On the tenth of April, 1810, the schools were
ordered to be closed, to the end, that under the pretence of attending
solely to the war, both Spain and America might be sunk deeper into a
state of ignorance. It was also ordained, that rights and rewards should
be forgotten, and that we should do nothing but send to Spain our money,
our men, provisions, productions, submissions, and obedience.
"The public press teemed with nothing but triumphs and victories, with
donations and acknowledgments wrested from the people, as yet uninformed
of our resolution; and under the most severe threats of punishment, a
political inquisition with all its horrors was established against those
who should read, possess, or receive papers, not only foreign but even
Spanish that were not issued at the manufactory of the regency. Contrary
to the very orders of the self-constituted sovereignty, previously
issued to deceive us, every bound was over-leaped in the re-election of
ultramarine functionaries, whose only merit consisted in swearing to
maintain the system contrived by the regency. In the most scandalous and
barefaced manner, that order which favoured our trade and encouraged our
agriculture was annulled, condemned to the flames, and its authors and
promoters proscribed. Every kind of aid was expected of us; but we were
never informed of its destination, inversion, and expenditure. In
contempt of even a shadow of public faith, and without any exception
whatever, all epistolary correspondence from these countries was ordered
to be opened, an excess unheard of even under the despotism of Godoy,
and only adopted to make the espionage over America more tyrannical. In
fine, the plans laid for the purpose of perpetuating our bondage now
began to be practically realized.
"In the mean time, Venezuela, free, and mistress of herself, thought of
nothing less than imitating the detestable conduct of the regency and
its agents: content with having secured her fate against the ambition of
an intrusive and illegitimate authority, and shielded it against the
blackest and most complicated plans, was satisfied with shewing by
positive acts her desire for peace, friendship, correspondence, and
co-operation with her European brethren. All those of this class who
were among us, as such were considered, and two-thirds of the political,
civil, and military employments, both of the high and middle classes,
remained or were placed in the hands of Europeans without any
precaution, but with a sincerity and good faith that nearly proved fatal
to our own interests.
"Our treasures were generously opened to our enemies, that they might
enjoy every convenience and profusion in their passage from our country:
the captains of the packets, Carmen, Fortuna, and Araucana were received
into our ports, and assisted with money to enable them to proceed on
their voyage, and fulfil their respective commissions, and even the
insolence and crimes of the captain of the Fortuna were referred to the
judgment of the Spanish government. Notwithstanding the junta of
government of Caracas made manifest the motives of precaution which
obliged them not to expose the public funds which were destined to
recover the nation, to the veracity of government they allowed and
exhorted the people to be generous, and use their fortunes according to
the impulse of their own sensibility, by publishing in the public papers
the mournful statement of the regency, in which was portrayed the
agonizing state of the nation, with the view to solicit our aid, and the
same time that they represented it, through the medium of their public
prints, as vigorous, organized, and triumphant; but these were destined
to deceive us. The commissioners of the regency sent to Quito,[2] Santa
Fé, and Peru were hospitably received, treated as friends, and their
pecuniary wants supplied to their own satisfaction. But we lose time in
thus analyzing the dark and cunning conduct of our enemies, as all their
endeavours have not sufficed to warp the imperious and triumphing
impression of ours.
"The arrogant mandataries of our country were not, however, the only
persons authorized to support the horrid plans of their constituents;
the same uniform and universal mission was brought out by all those who
inundated America from the sad and ominous reigns of the junta of
Seville, the central junta, and the regency, and under the system of
political freemasonry, founded on the Machiavelic pact; they all
accorded in mutually substituting, replacing, and assisting each other
in the combined plans against the felicity and political existence of
the new world. The island of Puerto Rico was immediately made the haunt
of all the agents of the regency; the place of equipment for all the
expeditions; the head quarters of all the anti-American forces; the
workshop of all the impostors, calumnies, triumphs and threats of the
regents; the refuge of all the wicked; the rendezvous of a new gang of
bucaniers, in order that there might not be wanting any of the
calamities of the sixteenth century in the new conquest of America in
the nineteenth. The Americans of Puerto Rico, oppressed by the bayonets,
cannons, fetters, and gibbets which surrounded the bashaw Melendes and
his satellites, had to add to their own misfortunes the painful
necessity of contributing to ours. Such was the fate of the Americans;
condemned not only to be galley-slaves, but to be the drivers of each
other.
"The conduct observed by Spain to America is harder and more insulting
than that which she appears to exercise towards France. It is well known
that part of the dynasty, still resisted by part of the nation, has had
decided partizans in many of those who considered themselves the first
national dignitaries, for their rank, offices, talents, and knowledge;
among these may be counted Morla, Azanza, Ofarrill, Urquijo, Masarredo,
and many others of every class and profession; but still there has not
appeared one of those who so much desire the liberty of independence and
regeneration of the peninsula, that has raised his voice in favour of
the American provinces. These, therefore, adopting the same principles
of fidelity and national integrity, have of their own accord been
ambitious of preserving themselves independent of such intrusive,
illegitimate, weak, and tumultuary governments, as have been all those
that have hitherto called themselves the agents of the king, or
representatives of the nation. It is vexing to see so much liberality,
so much civism, and so much disinterest in the cortes with regard to
disorganized, exhausted, and nearly conquered Spain, and full of so much
meanness, suspicion, prejudice and pride, towards America; tranquil,
faithful, generous, decided to assist her brethren, when she alone can
give reality, at least in the most essential point, to the theoretical
and brilliant plans which make the Spanish Congress so arrogant. How
many treasons, murders, assassinations, perfidies and convulsions have
appeared in Spain; these have passed by as the inseparable misfortunes
of circumstances, yet not one of the provinces that surrendered, or was
attached to the French domination, has been treated like Venezuela;
their conduct must however have been analyzed, and characterised
according to reasons, motives, and circumstances that dictated it; this
must have been judged in conformity to the rights of war, and the
sentiments of the nation must have been pronounced according to the
statements laid before it, but not one of them has yet been declared
traitorous, in open rebellion, and unnaturalized as was Venezuela; for
none of them has been created a public commission of diplomatic
mutineers, to arm Spaniard against Spaniard, to fan the flame of civil
war, and to burn and annihilate all that cannot be held in the name of
Ferdinand VII. America alone is condemned to endure the until now
unheard of condition of being warred upon, destroyed, or enslaved with
the very means of assistance which she destined for the liberty and
common felicity of the nation of which she was led to believe for a few
moments that she constituted a part.
"It appears that the independence of America creates more irritation to
Spain, than the foreign oppression that threatens her, for against her
are in preference employed measures that have not even been adopted
against the very provinces that have proclaimed the new king. The
incendiary and turbulent talent of a minister of the council of Indies
could not have a more dignified employment than that of again conquering
Venezuela with the same arms as those of the Alfingers and the Welzers,
those first tyrants of Venezuela, authorized by Charles V., and the
promoters of civil war amongst her primitive inhabitants, now re-assumed
in the name of a king placed on the throne against the pretensions of
the family of him who let out these provinces to the German factors.
Under this name of Ferdinand all the sluices of iniquity are opened upon
us, and the horrors of conquest are renewed, the remembrance of which
we had generously endeavoured to blot out from the memory of our
posterity; under this name we are treated with more severity than those
who abandoned it before we did; and under this name it is attempted to
continue the system of Spanish domination in America, which has been
looked upon as a political phenomenon even in the times of the reality,
energy and vigour of the Spanish monarchy. And can there be found any
law that obliges us to preserve it, and to suffer in its name the
torrent of distresses heaped upon us by those who call themselves the
agents of the peninsula? By their means this very name obtained the
treasures, the obedience, and acknowledgments of America, and by means
of their flagitious conduct afterwards, in the exercise of their powers,
the name of Ferdinand has lost every consideration amongst us, and
consequently we ought to abandon it for ever. Ex qua persona quis
lucrum capit, ejus factum præstare tenetur.
"The tyrant of Borrigum (primitive name of Puerto Rico) not content with
constituting himself a sovereign, to declare war against us, and with
insulting and calumniating us in his flimsy, mean, and self-flattering
papers; not satisfied with creating himself the gratuitous gaol-keeper
of the emissaries of peace, and confederation sent to him by his
comrade Migares from the castle of Zapáras de Maracaibo; because they
overturned the plans he had received, and accepted from the regency and
the new king of Spain, in exchange for the captain-generalship of
Venezuela, purchased at a cheap rate of the regents; not considering
such superior merit sufficiently rewarded with the honour of faithfully
serving his king; in the most barefaced manner plundered upwards of a
hundred thousand dollars from the public funds belonging to Caracas,
that had been embarked in the ship Ferdinand VII. in order to purchase
stores and military clothing in London, where the insurance was
effected; and in order that his insult might be the more complete, he
alleged that the Spanish government might waste and misapply them, that
England might appropriate them to herself, disowning our resolution, so
that in no place they could, or ought to be more secure than in his
hands, negociated by means of his partners in trade, as in fact they
were in Philadelphia, adding that an account should be given in when
Puerto Rico had conquered Venezuela, when the latter should deliver
herself up to the regency, or when Ferdinand VII. should return to reign
in Spain. Such it appears were the periods that the governor of Puerto
Rico imposed upon himself to render an account of so atrocious and
scandalous a depredation; but this is not all that this worthy agent of
the regency has done in favour of the designs of his constituents.
"Notwithstanding so much insult, robbery, and ingratitude, Venezuela
maintained her resolution, not to vary the principles she had traced out
for her conduct; the sublime act of her national representation was
proclaimed in the name of Ferdinand VII.; under his phantasmagorical
authority all the acts of our government and administration were
maintained, though they required no other origin than the people who had
constituted them. By the laws and regulations of Spain a horrible and
sanguinary gang of European conspirators were tried, and these laws were
mercifully infringed to save their lives, in order that the
philanthropic memory of our revolution might not be stained with the
blood of our brethren, although they were perfidious. Under the name of
Ferdinand, and through the interposition of the bonds of fraternity and
patriotism, endeavours were used to inform and reduce the imperious
mandataries of Coro and Maracaibo, who kept separated from our interests
our brethren of the west; under the auspices of reciprocal interests,
we triumphed over the oppressive acts of Barcelona, and under the same
we will conquer Guayana, twice snatched from our confederation, as was
Maracaibo, against the general wishes of its inhabitants.
"It would appear as if nothing now remained to be done to secure a
reconciliation with Spain, or the entire and absolute separation of
America, equally as ruinous and calamitous to the one, as it was
ungratefully despised by the other party; but Venezuela was desirous of
draining every means left within her reach, in order that justice and
necessity should leave her no other alternative than that of total
independence, which ought to have been declared on the fifteenth of
July, 1808, or on the nineteenth of April, 1810. After appealing to
sensibility and not to vengeance, in the horrid scenes that took place
at Quito, Pose, and La Pas; after beholding our own cause supported by
the uniformity of opinions in Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, the Floridas,
Mexico, Guatemala, and Chile; after obtaining an indirect guarantee on
the part of England; after having our conduct applauded by impartial
individuals in Europe; after seeing the same principles triumph from the
Orinoco to the Magdalena, and from Cape Codero to the Andes; we have
still to endure fresh insults, before we fly to the extreme of breaking
with our brethren for ever.
"Caracas, without having done more than imitate the conduct of many of
the provinces of Spain, and practised the rights that the regency
declared to appertain to America; without having had in this conduct
other designs than those inspired by the necessity of not being involved
in an unknown fate, and to relieve the regents from attending to the
government of countries as remote as they are extensive, at the same
time they protested to attend to nothing but the expulsion of the French
from Spain; without having rent her unity and political integrity with
Spain; without having disowned as was possible and proper the lame
rights of Ferdinand; the regency, far from applauding on the right of
convenience, if not of generosity, so just, modest and necessary a
resolution, and without even answering or submitting to the judgment of
the nation our complaints and our claims: Caracas is declared in a state
of war, her inhabitants are proclaimed rebels and unnaturalized, every
communication with her brethren is cut off, England is deprived of her
trade, the excesses of Melendes are approved of, and he is authorized to
commit whatever the malignity of his heart may suggest to him, however
opposed to reason and to justice; all this is proved by the order of
the fourth of September, 1810, unparalleled for its enormity even among
the despots of Constantinople or Indostan; and not to deviate in the
least from the plots of the conquest, a new encomendero is sent out,
under the title of a pacificator, (pacificador) who with more
prerogatives than conquerors and settlers themselves, was to fix his
residence in Puerto Rico, and thence to threaten, rob, pirate, promise,
deceive, excite civil disturbances, and all in the name of the beloved
Ferdinand VII.
"Till then the progress of the system of subversion, anarchy, and
depredation, which the regency proposed to itself on hearing of the
movements of Caracas, had been but slow; now the principal fears of
civil war being transferred nearer to us, the subaltern agents acquired
more strength, the flames of passion were increased, as well as the
efforts of the parties guided by the directions of Cortavarria and
Melendes. Hence originated the incendiary energy acquired by the
ephemeral sedition of the west; hence the flame of discord, newly formed
by Myares, rendered vain and arrogant by the imaginary and promised
captain-general-ship of Venezuela; hence the American blood spilled in
spite of ourselves on the plains of Coro; hence the robberies and
assassinations committed on our coasts by the commissioned pirates of
the regency; hence that miserable blockade, intended to reduce and
disaffect our settlements on the coast; hence the insults committed on
the English flag; hence the falling off of our trade; hence the
conspiracies of the valleys of Aragua and Cumaná; hence the horrid
perfidy in Guayana; and the insulting transportation of its leading
characters to the Moorish dungeons of Puerto Rico—dungeons constructed
like those of Tunis and Algiers; hence the generous and impartial
offices of reconciliation sincerely interposed by a representative[3] of
the British government in the Antilles, and rejected by the pseudo
pacificator; hence, in fine, all the evils, all the atrocities, and all
the crimes which are and ever will be attached to the names of
Cortavarria and Melendes in Venezuela, and which have impelled her
government to exceed what was proposed when it took upon itself the fate
of those who honored it with their confidence.
"The mission of Cortavarria in the nineteenth century, and the state of
Spain which decreed it, compared with America, against whom it is
directed, evinces to what an extent the illusion of ambition blinds
those who found all the origin of their authority on the depravity of
the people. This act alone sufficed to authorize our conduct. The spirit
of Charles V., the memory of Cortes and Pizarro, and the names of
Montesuma and Atahualpa, are involuntarily reproduced in our
imagination, when we see the adelantados, the pesquisadores, and the
encomenderos, officers peculiar to the first settlement of America,
renewed in a country which, having suffered three centuries of sacrifice
and debasement, had promised to continue faithful on the only condition
of being free, in order that accidents of slavery might not tarnish the
merit of fidelity. The scandalous plenitude of power conferred on a man
who is authorised by an intrusive and illegitimate government, under the
insulting name of pacificator, to tyrannize and plunder, and to crown
the vexation, that he might pardon a noble, generous, tranquil, innocent
people, who were masters of their own rights, could only be credited in
the impotent delirium of a government that tyrannizes over a
disorganized nation, stunned by the fury of the tempest that reaches
her; but as the evils of this disorder, and the abuses of such an
usurpation might be considered as not derived from Ferdinand, already
acknowledged in Venezuela, at the time that he was unable to prevent
such accumulated insults, such excesses, and so much violence, committed
in his name, we consider it necessary to retrace the origin of these
rights, that we may descant on the nullity and invalidity of our
generous oath, by which we acknowledged him conditionally;
notwithstanding, we have in spite of ourselves to violate the
spontaneous silence we had imposed upon ourselves respecting every thing
that occurred prior to the affairs at the Escurial and Aranjues.
"The fact, that America does not belong to the territory of Spain is
self-evident, and it is equally evident that the right which the
Bourbons justly or unjustly exercised over it, and notwithstanding this
was hereditary, yet it could not be disposed of without the consent of
the people, and particularly of those of America, who, on the election
between the French and Austrian dynasties, might have acted in the
seventeenth century as they now have done in the nineteenth. The bull of
Alexander VI., and the titles which the house of Austria alleged in the
American code had no other origin than the right of power and conquest,
partially ceded to the conquerors and to the settlers for their
assistance rendered to the crown in extending its dominion in America.
Without taking into consideration the scanty population of the country,
the extermination of the natives, and the emigration which the
self-called mother country sustained; it appears that when the fury of
conquest had ceased—when the thirst for gold was satisfied—when the
continued equilibrium was declared in favour of Spain, by the
advantageous acquisition of America—the feudal government destroyed and
rooted out from the time of the Bourbons in Spain, and every right
extinct that did not originate in the new concessions or commands of the
prince, the conquerors and the settlers then became absolved of theirs.
As soon as the faultiness and invalidity of the rights which the
Bourbons have arrogated to themselves are demonstrated, the titles by
which the American descendants of the conquerors possessed these
countries revive—not to the detriment of the natives and primitive
proprietors, but to equalize them in the enjoyment of liberty, property,
and independence, which they always held by a right stronger than that
of the Bourbons or any other person or persons to whom they may have
ceded America, without the consent of its natural owners, the Americans.
"That America does not belong to the territory of Spain is a principle
of natural, and a law of positive right. No title just or unjust which
exists of American slavery can belong to the Spaniards of Europe, and
all the liberality of Alexander VI. could only declare the Austrian
kings promoters of the faith, in order to find out for them a
preternatural right by which to make them lords of America. Neither the
pre-eminence of the parent state, nor the prerogative of the mother
country, could at any time constitute the origin of lordship on the part
of Spain. The first was lost the moment the monarch who was acknowledged
by the Americans left his country and renounced his rights; and the
second never was more than a scandalous abuse of words, as great as that
of calling our slavery felicity; that of calling the fiscals protectors
of the indians; and that of saying that the sons of Americans were
divested of every right and civil dignity. By the mere act of even
passing from one country to another to settle in it, those who do not
leave their homes acquire no property, nor do they expose themselves to
the hardships of emigration. Those who conquer and obtain possession of
a country by means of their labour, industry, cultivation, and
connection with the natives thereof, are the individuals who have a
right of preference in preserving it, which right they transmit to their
posterity born therein; for if the country where one is born possessed
the origin of sovereignty, or gave the right of acquisition, the general
will of nations, and the fate of the human race, would then be riveted
to the soil, as are the trees, mountains, rivers, and lakes.
"Neither could it ever be considered as a title of property to one part
of a nation, the other having gone to another country to settle in it;
for by such a right Spain would belong to the Phœnicians, or their
descendants, or to the Carthagenians, wherever these may be found; even
the whole of the nations of Europe would have to change their abodes to
make room for and re-establish so singular a territorial right; home
would then become as precarious as are the wants and caprices of men.
The moral abuse of the maternity of Spain, with regard to America is
still more insignificant, for it is well known that in the natural order
of things, it is the duty of the father to emancipate the son, so soon
as his minority expire, and he is able to use his strength and reason in
providing for his subsistence; and also that it is the duty of the son
to emancipate himself, whenever the cruelty or extravagance of the
father or tutor endanger his welfare, or expose his patrimony to become
the prey of a miser, or an usurper. Under these principles let a
comparison be made of the three hundred years of our filiation to Spain;
and even when it is proved, that she was our mother, it still remains to
be proved that we are yet her minors or pupils.
"At any period when Spain has entertained any doubt of the rights of the
Bourbons, or of any other dynasty, the only source, and that not a very
clear one, of the Spanish dominion in America, it would appear that the
Americans were excluded from alleging any reasons that might destroy
such claims, though doubtful from their very origin; but as Venezuela
may hereafter be reproached for the conditional oath by which the
representative body that now declares its absolute independence of any
foreign power previously acknowledged Ferdinand VII., the same august
body feels anxious that no room should be left for scruples of
conscience, for the illusions of ignorance, and for the malice of
wounded ambition, whereby to discredit, calumniate, and weaken a
resolution, taken with such maturity and deliberation as best suited its
magnitude and importance.
"It is well known, that the promissory oath in question is no more than
an accessory bond, which always pre-supposes the validity and legitimacy
of the contract ratified by the same. When in the contract there is no
defect that may render it null and illegitimate, it is then that we
invoke God by an oath, believing that he will not refuse to witness it,
and guarantee the fulfilment of our promises, because the obligation to
comply with them is founded on an evident maxim of the natural law
instituted by the divine author. God can at no time guarantee any
contract that is not binding in the natural order of things, nor can it
be supposed that he will accept any contract opposed to those very laws
which he himself has established for the felicity of the human race. It
would be insulting his wisdom to believe that he would listen to our
vows when we implore his divine concurrence to a contract that is
opposed to our own liberty, the only origin of the right of our
actions—such a supposition would inculcate an idea that God had an
interest in multiplying our duties by means of such agreements, to the
prejudice of our national liberty. Even in case the oath could add any
new obligation to that of the contract thereby confirmed, the nullity of
the one would consequently be inseparable from the nullity of the
other; and if he who violates a sworn contract be criminal, and worthy
of punishment, it is because he has violated good faith, the only bond
of society, without the perjury being more concerned than to increase
the crime, and to aggravate the punishment. That national law which
binds us to fulfil our promises, and that divine one which forbids us to
invoke the name of God in vain, do not in any manner alter the
obligation contracted under the simultaneous and inseparable effects of
both laws, so that the infraction of the one supposes the infraction of
the other. For our good we call on God to witness our promises, and when
we believe that he can guarantee them, and avenge their violation, it is
only because the contract has nothing in itself that can render it
invalid, illicit, unworthy of or contrary to the eternal justice of the
Supreme Arbiter to whom we submit it. It is according to these
principles that we are to analyze the conditional oath by which the
congress of Venezuela has promised to preserve the rights legally held
by Ferdinand VII., without attributing to it any other which, being
contrary to the liberty of the people, would consequently invalidate the
contract, and annul the oath.
"We have seen that the people of Venezuela, impelled by the government
of Spain, became insensible of the circumstances that rendered the
tolerated rights of Ferdinand void, in consequence of the transactions
of the Escurial and Aranjues, as well as those of all his house, by the
cessions and abdications made at Bayonne; and from the demonstration of
this truth, follows, as a corollary, the invalidity of an oath, which,
besides being conditional, could not subsist beyond the contract to
which it was added as an accessory bond. To preserve the right of
Ferdinand was all that Caracas promised on the nineteenth of April, at a
time when she was ignorant that he had lost them—Judicio caret
juramentum, incantum Div. tom. 22, p. 80, art. 3. Si vero sit quidem
posibile fieri; sed fieri non debeat, vel quid est per se malum, vel
quia est boni impeditivum, tunc juramento deest justitia, et ideo non
est servandum. Quest, cit. art. 7. Even if Ferdinand retained them with
regard to Spain, it remains to be proved, whether by virtue of the same
he was authorized to cede America to another dynasty, without the
concurrence of her own consent. The accounts which Venezuela, in spite
of the oppression and cunning of the intrusive government, was enabled
to obtain of the conduct of the Bourbons, and the fatal effects that it
was likely to entail on America, have constituted a body of
irrefragable proofs, evincing that as Ferdinand no longer retained any
rights, the preservation of which Venezuela promised, as well as the
oath by which she confirmed this promise, consequently are, and ought to
be cancelled—Jurabis in veritate, et in judicio, et in justicia. From
the first part of the position, the nullity of the second becomes a
legitimate consequence.
"But neither the Escurial, Aranjues, nor Bayonne were the first theatres
of the transactions which deprived the Bourbons of their rights to
America. By the treaty of Basil, made July fifteenth, 1795, (by which
Godoy obtained the title of Prince of the Peace), and in the court of
Spain the fundamental laws of the Spanish dominion were broken. Charles
IV., contrary to one of them (Recopil. de Indias, law 1. tit. 1.) ceded
the island of Santa Domingo to France, and disposed of Louisiana to the
same foreign power, which unequalled and scandalous infractions
authorised the Americans, against whom they were committed, as well as
the whole of the Colombian people, to separate from the obedience, and
lay aside the oath by which they had bound themselves to the crown of
Castile, in like manner as they were entitled to protest against the
imminent danger which threatened the integrity of the monarchy in both
worlds, by the introduction of French troops into Spain previous to the
transactions at Bayonne, invited no doubt by one of the Bourbon
factions, in order to usurp the national sovereignty in favour of an
intruder, a foreigner, or a traitor; but as these events are prior to
the period that we have fixed on for our discussion, we will return to
those which have authorised our conduct since the year 1808.
"Every one is aware of the occurrences that took place at the Escurial
in 1807, but perhaps all are not acquainted with the natural results of
those events. It is not our intention to enter here into the discovery
of the origin of the discord that existed in the family of Charles IV.;
let England and France attribute it to themselves, both governments have
their accusers and their defenders; neither is it to our purpose to
notice the marriage agreed on between Ferdinand and the daughter-in-law
of Napoleon, the peace of Tilsit, the conference at Erfuhrt, the secret
treaty at St. Cloud, and the emigration of the house of Bragansa to the
Brasils. What most materially concerns us is, that by the transactions
of the Escurial, Ferdinand VII. was declared a traitor to his father
Charles IV. A hundred pens and a hundred presses published at the same
time in both worlds his perfidy, and the pardon which at his prayer was
granted to him by his father; but this pardon, as an attribute of the
sovereignty and of paternal authority, only absolved the son from
corporal punishment; the king his father had no power to free him from
the infamy and inability which the constitutional laws of Spain impose
on the traitor, not only to prevent him from obtaining the royal
dignity, but even the lowest office of civil employment; Ferdinand
therefore never could be a lawful king of Spain, or of the Indies.
"To this condition the heir of the crown remained reduced till the month
of March, 1808, when while the court was at Aranjues, the project that
was frustrated at the Escurial was converted into insurrection, and open
mutiny, by the friends of Ferdinand. The public exasperation against the
ministry of Godoy served as a pretext to the faction of Ferdinand, and
as an indirect plea to convert to the good of the nation what was
perhaps allotted to other designs. The fact of using force against his
father, instead of supplication and convincing arguments; his having
excited the people to mutiny; his having assembled the mob in front of
the palace, in order to take it by surprise, to insult the minister,
and force the king to abdicate his crown, which, far from giving
Ferdinand any title to it, tended to increase his crime, to aggravate
his treachery, and to complete his inability to ascend the throne,
vacated by violence, perfidy, and faction. Charles IV., outraged,
disobeyed, and threatened, had no other alternative suitable to his
decorum, and favourable to his vengeance, than to emigrate to France to
implore the protection of Bonaparte, in favour his offended royal
dignity. Under the nullity of the abdication of Aranjues, and contrary
to the will of the people of Spain, all the Bourbons assembled at
Bayonne, preferring their personal resentments to the safety of the
nation. The emperor of the French availed himself of this opportunity,
and having under his controul, and within his influence the whole family
of Ferdinand, and several of the first Spanish dignitaries, as well as
many substitutes for deputies in the cortes, he obliged Ferdinand to
restore the crown to his father, and then the latter to cede it to him,
the emperor, in order that he might afterwards confer it on his brother
Joseph.
"When the emissaries of the new King reached Caracas, Venezuela was
ignorant or knew but partially what had happened. The innocence of
Ferdinand, compared to the insolence and despotism of the favourite,
Godoy, directed the conduct of Venezuela when the local authorities
wavered on the fifteenth of July, 1808; and being left to choose between
the alternative of delivering himself up to a foreign power, or of
remaining faithful to a king who appeared to be unfortunate and
persecuted—the ignorance of what had occurred—triumphed over the
interests of the country, and Ferdinand was acknowledged, under the
belief, that by this means, the unity of the nation being maintained,
she would be saved from the oppression that threatened her, and the king
ransomed, of whose virtues, wisdom, and rights we were falsely
prepossessed. But less was requisite on the part of those who relied on
our good faith to oppress us. Ferdinand, disqualified, and unable
legally to obtain the crown—previously announced by the leaders of
Spain as dispossessed of his right of succession—incapable of governing
in America, and held in bondage by a foreign power—from that time
became by illusion a legitimate but unfortunate prince. As many as had
the audacity to call themselves his self-created heirs and
representatives became as such, and taking advantage of the innate
fidelity of the Spaniards of both worlds, and forming themselves into
intrusive governments, they appropriated to themselves the sovereignty
of the people, under the name of a chimerical king, began to exercise
new tyrannies, and, in a word, the commercial junta of Cadiz sought to
extend her controul over the whole of Spanish America.
"Such have been the antecedents and consequences of an oath, which,
dictated by candour and generosity, and conditionally maintained by good
faith, is now arrayed against us, in order to perpetuate those evils
which the dear-bought experience of three years has proved to be
inseparable to so fatal and ruinous an engagement. Taught as we are by a
series of evils, insults, hardships, and ingratitude, during the
interval of from the fifteenth of July, 1808, to the fifth of July,
1811, and such as we have already manifested, it became full time that
we should abandon it, as a talisman invented by ignorance, and adopted
by a misguided fidelity, as from its first existence it has constantly
heaped upon us all the evils that accompany an ambiguous state of
suspicion and discord. The rights of Ferdinand, and the legitimate
representation of them on the part of the intrusive governments of Spain
on the one side, demonstrations of compassion and gratitude on the
other, have been the two favourite springs alternately played on to
support our illusion, to decrease our substance, to prolong our
degradation, to multiply our evils, and ignominiously to prepare us to
receive that passive fate prepared for us by those who have dealt with
us so kindly for three centuries. Ferdinand VII. is the universal
watch-word for tyranny, as well in Spain as in America.
"No sooner was that vigilant and suspicious fear, produced among us by
the contradictory acts and artificious falsehoods of the strange and
short-lived governments which have succeeded one another since the junta
of Seville, made known to these governments, than they recurred to a
system of apparent liberality towards us, in order to cover with flowers
the very snare we had not perceived while covered by the veil of
candour, which was at length rent asunder by mistrust. For this purpose
of deceit were accelerated, and tumultuously assembled, the cortes, so
wished for by the nation, and opposed by the commercial government of
Cadiz, but which were at length considered as necessary to restrain the
torrent of liberty and justice, which on every side burst the wounds of
oppression and iniquity in the new world; it was even still supposed
that the habit of obedience, submission, and dependence, would be in us
superior to the conviction which at so high a price we had just
obtained.
"It is most strange by what kind of deception, fatal to Spain, it has
been believed, that the one part of a nation which crosses the ocean, or
is born under the tropics, acquires a habit united to servitude, and
incapable of bending to the habits of liberty. The effects of this
strong-rooted prejudice, as notorious to the world as they are fatal,
were at length converted into the welfare of America. Without it Spain
would perhaps not have lost the rank she held as a nation, and America
in obtaining this blessing would have had to pass through the bitter
ordeal of a civil war, more ominous to its promoters than to ourselves.
"Our public papers have already sufficiently demonstrated the defects
under which the cortes laboured respecting America, and the measures as
illegal as insulting adopted by that body to give us a representation
which we could not but object to, even though we were, as the regency
had loudly boasted us to be, integral parts of the nation, and had no
other complaints to allege against their government than the scandalous
usurpation of our rights at a moment when they most required our aid.
They have, no doubt, been informed of the reasonings we used with their
perfidious envoy, Montenegro, at a time that the former missions being
frustrated, the great shipments of newspapers filled with triumphs,
reforms, heroic acts, and lamentations, being rendered useless; and the
inefficacy of blockades, pacificators, squadrons and expeditions, made
known; it was thought convenient to dazzle the self-love of the
Americans, by seating near to the throne of the cortes deputies whom we
had never named, and who could not be chosen our substitutes by those
who created them such, in the same manner as they did others for the
provinces in possession of the French, submitting to, and alleging
themselves content under their domination. In case this puerile measure
of the prolific genius of Spain should not produce a due effect, the
envoy (and for this purpose an American, a native of Caracas, was
selected) was ordered, that in case the energy of the country, now
called rebellion, should prevail against fraternity, (the name given to
perfidy), he was to add fuel to the flame already kindled in Coro and
Maracaibo, and that discord, again raising her serpent head, might lead
the herald of the cortes by the hand under the banner of rebellion
through those deceived districts of Venezuela that had not been able
to-triumph over their oppressing tyrants.
"Stratagems and artifices were repeatedly forged, in order that
duplicity and cunning might prepare the road for the sanguinary armies
of the chiefs of Coro, Maracaibo, and Puerto Rico; and when the cortes
were convinced that the conduct of Ferdinand, his bonds of affinity with
the emperor of the French, and his influence over all the Bourbons
already placed under his tutelage, began to weaken the insidious
impressions, which fidelity, sustained by illusion, had produced in the
Americans; preventatives were employed to stop the flame already
kindled, and limit it to what was yet necessary for their vast
complicated and dark designs. For this purpose was written the eloquent
manifest which the cortes on the ninth of January directed against
America, worded in a stile worthy of a better object; but under the
brilliancy of diction the dark side of the argument, designed to
deceive, was discovered. Fearing that we should be the first to protest
against the whole of these nullities, they began to calculate on what
was already known, not to risk what was yet hidden. The misfortunes of
Ferdinand were the pretexts that had obtained for his
pseudo-representatives the treasures, submission, and slavery of
America; and Ferdinand seduced, deceived, and prostituted to the designs
of the emperor of the French, is now the last resource to which they fly
to extinguish the flames of liberty which Venezuela had kindled in the
south continent. We have discovered and published the true spirit of the
manifest in question, reduced to the following reasoning, which may be
considered as an exact commentary:—'America is threatened with becoming
the victim of a foreign power, or of continuing to be our slave; but in
order to recover her rights, and to throw off all dependency whatever,
she has considered it necessary not violently to break the bonds that
held her to this country. Ferdinand has been the signal of reunion which
the new world had adopted, and we have followed; he is suspected of
connivance with the emperor of the French, and if we give ourselves up
blindly to him, we afford the Americans a pretext for believing us still
his representatives; and as these designs already begin to be understood
in some parts of America, let us previously manifest our intention not
to acknowledge Ferdinand, except under certain conditions; these will
never be carried into effect, and whilst Ferdinand neither in fact nor
right is our king, we shall reign over America, the country we so much
covet, which although so difficult to preserve in slavery, will not then
so easily slip through our fingers.' Such are the expressions
illustrative of the opinions of Spaniards, agitated in the cortes,
respecting the allegiance to Ferdinand.
"The above brilliant appearance of liberality is now the real and
visible spring of the complicated machine destined to excite and stir up
commotions in America; at the same time that within the walls of the
cortes justice towards us is overlooked, our efforts are eluded, our
resolutions are contemned, our enemies are supported, the voices of our
imaginary representatives are suppressed, the inquisition is renewed
against them, when the liberty of the press is proclaimed, and it is
controversially discussed whether the regency could or could not declare
us free, and one integral part of the nation. When an American, worthy
of that name, speaks against the abuses of the regency in Puerto Rico,
endeavours are made to silence his just, energetic, and imperious
claims, that distinguish him from the slaves of despotism, and by means
of a short, cunning, and insignificant decree, they strive to avoid the
conflict of justice against iniquity. Melendés, named by the regency
king of Puerto Rico, is by a decree of the cortes left with the
equivalent investiture of a governor, names synonymous in America,
because it now appeared too monstrous to have two kings in a small
island of the Spanish Antilles. Cortavarria only was capable of eluding
the effects of a decree dictated merely by a momentary fit of decency.
It happened that when the investiture, granted by the regency to
Melendes was declared iniquitous, arbitrary, and tyrannical, and a
revocation was extended to all the countries of America, then situated
as was Puerto Rico, nothing was said of the plenipotentiary Cortavarria,
authorized by the same regency against Venezuela, with powers the most
uncommon and scandalous ever registered in the annals of organized
despotism.
"After this decree of the cortes the effects of discord promoted,
sustained, and denied at the fatal observatory of Puerto Rico were more
severely felt; it was after this decree that the fishermen and coasters
were inhumanly assassinated in Ocumare, by the pirates of Cortavarria,
after the report of which Cumana and Barcelona were blockaded,
threatened, and summoned. A new and sanguinary conspiracy against
Venezuela was formed, and organized by a vile emissary, who perfidiously
entered the peaceable bosom of his country, in order to destroy it;
deceptions were successively practised on the most innocent and
laborious classes of the imported colonists of Venezuela, principally
emigrants from the Canary Islands, and in spite of our endeavours the
chief instigators were led to the block as a sacrifice to justice and to
tranquillity. By the suggestions of the pacificator of the cortes, and
posterior to their said decree, the political union of our constitution
was lacerated in Valencia; attempts were made in vain to reduce other
cities of the interior; a false summons was sent to Carora, by the
factious leaders of the west, to the end that Venezuela might on the
same day be deluged in blood, and sunk in affliction and desolation, and
be hostilely assaulted from every point within the reach of the
conspirators, who were scattered amongst us by the same government that
issued the decree in favour of Puerto Rico and of all America. The name
of Ferdinand VII. is the pretext under which the new world is about to
be laid waste, if the example of Venezuela does not henceforward cause
the standard of our unshaken and established liberty to be distinguished
from the banners of a seditious and dissembled fidelity.
"The bitter duty of vindicating ourselves would carry us still further,
if we did not dread splitting on the same rocks as have the governments
of Spain, by substituting resentment for justice; at the same time that
we can charge her with three centuries of acts of injustice, we have
opposed three years of lawful, generous, and philanthropic efforts to
obtain what it was never in our power to dispose of, although by nature
ours. Had gall and poison been the chief agents of this our solemn,
true, and candid manifest, we should have begun by destroying the rights
of Ferdinand, in consequence of the illegitimacy of his origin, declared
by his mother at Bayonne, and published in the French and Spanish
papers; we should have proved the personal defects of Ferdinand, his
ineptitude to reign, his weak and degrading conduct in the court at
Bayonne; his inefficient education, and the futile securities that
offered for the realization of the gigantic hopes of the governments of
Spain; hopes founded in the illusion of America, nor any other support
than the political interests of England, much opposed to the rights of
the Bourbons. The public opinion of Spain, and the experience of the
revolution of the kingdom, furnish us with sufficient proofs of the
conduct of the mother, and the qualifications of the son, without
recurring to the manifest of the minister Azanza, published after the
transactions of Bayonne, and the secret memoirs of Maria Luisa; but
decency is the guide of our conduct, to which we are ready to sacrifice
even our reason. Sufficient has already been alleged to prove the
justice, necessity, and utility of our resolution, for the support of
which, nothing is wanting but the examples by which we will strive to
justify our independence.
"It were necessary for the partizans of slavery in the new world either
to destroy, or to falsify history, that unchangeable monument of the
rights and of the usurpations of the human race, before they could
maintain that America was not liable to the same changes that all other
nations have experienced. Even when the rights of the Bourbons had been
incontestible and indelible, the oath that we have proved never did
exist, the injustice, force, and deceit with which the same was exacted
of us would suffice to render it null and void, so soon as it was found
to be opposed to our liberty, grievous to our rights, prejudicial to our
interests, and fatal to our tranquillity. Such is the nature of an oath
made to the conquerors and to their heirs, at the same time that the
crown holds them in oppression by means of the same additional strength
that it obtained by means of the result of their conquest. It was in
this manner that Spain herself recovered her rights, after she had sworn
allegiance to the Carthagenians, Romans, Goths, Arabs, and almost to the
French; nevertheless she yet disowns the rights of America, no longer to
depend on any nation when she is capable of throwing off the yoke, and
following the example of Spain and of other nations.
"It would be superfluous to remind our enemies of what they already
knew, and in what they have themselves founded the sacred right of their
own liberty and independence; epochs so memorable, that they ought not
to have been tarnished with the slavery of the greater part of a country
situated on the other side of the ocean. But unfortunately it is not
they alone whom it is necessary to convince by palpable examples of the
justice and common resemblance that our independence bears to that of
all other nations which had lost and again recovered it. The illusions
of slavery, kept alive by the candour of the Americans, and supported by
the most criminal abuse that superstition can form of the established
belief and religion, which one would suppose were only dictated for the
happiness, liberty, and salvation of the people, namely, by the
excommunications denounced against the people of Caracas for changing
their government, render it necessary to tranquillize the deceived piety
of some, to instruct their unwary ignorance, and stimulate their apathy,
that had slumbered since the unusual tranquillity of the new order of
things: in short, it is time to inculcate, that governments never had
nor ever can have any other duration than the utility and happiness of
the human race may require; that kings are not of any privileged nature,
nor of an order superior to other men; that their authority emanates
from the people, directed and supported by the providence of God, who
leaves our actions to our own free-will; that his omnipotence does not
interfere in favour of any peculiar form of government; and that neither
religion nor its ministers can anathematize the efforts of a nation
struggling to be free and independent in the political order of things,
and resolved to depend only on God and his ministers in a moral and
religious sense.
"The very people of God, governed by himself, and guided by such
miracles, portentous signs and favors as will perhaps never again be
repeated, offer a proof of the rights of insurrection on the part of the
people sufficiently satisfactory to the orthodox piety of the friends
of public order. The subjects of Pharaoh, and bound by force to obey
him, collect round Moses, and under his guidance triumph over their
enemies, and recover their independence without being blamed by God or
his prophet and legislator, Moses, for their conduct, or being subjected
by them to the least malediction or anathema. This same people being
afterwards subjected by the forces of Nebuchadnezzar; first—under the
direction of Holofernes, Judith was sent by God to procure their
independence by the death of the Babylonian general. Under Antiochus,
Epiphanes, Mattathias and his sons raised the standard of independence,
and God blessed and aided their efforts till he obtained the entire
liberty of his people against the oppression of that impious king and
his successors. Not only against the foreign kings who oppressed them
did the Israelites resort to the right of insurrection by breaking
through the obedience to force; but even against those whom God had
given them in their own country and of their own nation do we behold
them claim this imprescriptable right wherever their liberty and their
advantage required it, or when the sacred character of those facts by
which God himself bound them to those he chose as their governors, had
been profaned. David obtained the allegiance of the Israelites in favour
of his dynasty, and his son Solomon ratified it in favour of his
posterity; but at the death of this king, who had oppressed his subjects
by exactions and contributions to support the splendour of his court and
the luxury and sumptuousness of his pleasures, then the tribes of Judah
and Benjamin alone acknowledged his son, and the other ten, availing
themselves of their rights, recovered their political independence, and
in excuse thereof deposited their sovereignty in Jereboam, the son of
Nabath. The momentary and passing hardships of the reign of Solomon were
sufficient for the Israelites to annul their obedience sworn to his
line, and to place another on the throne without waiting for an order
from the Deity, informing them, that their fate no longer depended on
the kings of Judah, nor on the ministers, chiefs, or priests of Solomon.
And shall the Christian people of Venezuela and of all Spanish America
be still in a worse plight, and after being declared free by the
government of Spain after three hundred years of captivity, exactions,
hardships, and injustice, shall they not be allowed to do what the God
of Israel, whom they equally adore, formerly permitted to his people
without being spurned, and without vengeance being hurled upon their
heads? It is his divine hand that guides our conduct, and to his eternal
judgments our resolution shall be submitted.
"If the independence of the Hebrew people was not a sin against the
written law, that of a Christian people cannot be such against the law
of grace. At no time has the apostolical see excommunicated any nation
that has risen against the tyranny of those kings or governments which
had violated the social compact. The Swiss, Dutch, French, and North
Americans proclaimed their independence, overturned their constitution,
and varied their forms of government without having incurred any other
spiritual censures than those which the church might have fulminated for
the infringements on the belief, discipline, or piety, but without their
being connected with political measures or alluding to the civil
transactions of the people. The Swiss were bound by oath to Germany, as
were also the Dutch to Spain, the French to Louis XVI., and the North
Americans to George III.; yet neither they nor the princes that favoured
their independence were excommunicated by the Pope. The grandfather of
Ferdinand VII., one of the most pious and catholic kings that ever
filled the throne of Spain, together with his nephew, Louis XVI.,
protected the independence of North America, without dreading
ecclesiastical censures or the anger of heaven; and now that the order
and succession of events more justly place it within the reach of South
America, those who call themselves the authorized agents of the grandson
wish to abuse that same religion so much respected by Charles III., in
order to prolong the most atrocious and unparalleled usurpations. Just,
omnipotent, and most merciful God! Till when will fanaticism dispute the
empire of that sacred religion which thou sent to the uncorrupted
regions of America for thy glory and her felicity.
"The events which have accumulated in Europe to terminate the bondage of
America, beyond doubt entered into the high designs of Providence.
Placed at a transatlantic distance of two thousand leagues, we have done
nothing in the three years which have elapsed since we ought to be free
and independent, till the period when we resolved to be so, than pass
through the bitter trials of stratagems, conspiracies, insults,
hostilities, and depredations on the part of that same nation whom we
invite to partake of the good of our regeneration, and for whose
welfare we wished to open the gates of the new world, heretofore closed
to all communication with the old one, now wasted and inflamed by war,
hunger, and desolation. Three distinct oligarchies have declared war
against us, have despised our claims, have excited civil dissensions
amongst us, have sown the seeds of discord and mistrust in our great
family, have planned three horrible conspiracies against our liberty,
have interrupted our trade, have suppressed our agriculture, have
traduced our conduct, and have sought to raise against us an European
power, by vainly imploring its aid to oppress us. The same flag, the
same language, the same religion, the same laws, have till now
confounded the party of liberty with that of tyranny: Ferdinand VII. as
liberator, has been opposed to Ferdinand VII. as oppressor; and if we
had not resolved to abandon a name at the same time synonymous with
crime and virtue, America would in the end be enslaved by the same power
that is exercised for the independence of Spain.
"Such has been the nature of the imperious impulse of conviction,
tending to open our eyes, and to impel Venezuela to separate eternally
from a name so ominous and so fatal. Placed by it in the irrevocable
alternative of being the slave or the enemy of her brethren, she has
preferred the purchase of her own freedom at the expense of friendship,
without destroying the means of that reconciliation she desired. The
most powerful reasons, the most serious meditations, the most profound
considerations, long discussions, contested debates, well analyzed
combinations, imperious events, imminent dangers, and the public opinion
clearly pronounced and firmly sustained, have been the precursors of
that solemn declaration made on the fifth of July, by the general
congress of Venezuela, of the absolute independence of this part of
South America; an act sighed for and applauded by the people of the
capital, sanctioned by the powers of the confederation, acknowledged by
the representatives of the provinces, sworn to and hailed by the chief
of the church of Venezuela, and to be maintained with the lives,
fortunes, and honour of all the citizens.
"Freemen, companions of our fate! Ye who have known how to divest your
hearts of fear, or of hope; give from the elevation on which your
virtues have placed you an impartial and disinterested look on the
portrait that Venezuela has just traced out to you. She constitutes you
the arbitrators of her differences with Spain, and the judges of her new
destinies. If you have been affected by our evils, and are interested
in our felicity, unite your efforts with ours, that the artifices of
ambition may not any longer triumph over liberality and justice.
"To you it belongs to convince Spain of what an unfortunate rivalship
places beyond the reach of America. Refrain the giddiness that has
seized on her new governments; point out to them the reciprocal
advantages of our regeneration; unfold to them the soothing prospect
that they are prevented from beholding in America by that monopoly which
has hardened their hearts; tell them what threatens them in Europe, and
point out to them what they may expect in America, tranquil,
uncorrupted, and already covered with all the blessings of liberty; nay
swear to them in our name, that Venezuela awaits her brethren with open
arms to share with them her happiness without asking any other sacrifice
than that of prejudice, pride, and ambition, which for three centuries
have produced the united misery of both countries."
"Juan Antonio Rodriguez Dominguez, President."
"Francisco Isnardy, Secretary."
"Federal Palace of Caracas, July 30th, 1811."
