MEXICO. 97 the King"'s Prerogative, in its fullest extent, in the vast pos- sessions of Ultramar.* Yet such were the pretensions of each, and all of the ephemeral Juntas, that started up in the Peninsula. Com- missioners from Asturias, and Seville,-j- (the two first Juntas established in the Mother country,) arrived, almost at the same moment, in the Colonies, equally exclusive in their pretensions, and authoritative in their demands. In the im- possibility of reconciling their rival claims, the attention of the Creoles was naturally turned to the source from which they emanated, and to the means by which the vacuum in the frame of the government, occasioned by the captivity of the Sovereign, had been filled up in the Peninsula. They saw every where delegates chosen by the people exercising authority under the denomination of Juntas; and these again, deputing members of their own body to form a Central J unta, which was entrusted with the supreme command. They heard this course not only justified by the sages of the nation, but admired by the world, and pronounced by one, whose name they had been taught to respect, (Don Caspar Jovellanos,) " to be the undeniable and strictly natural right of any nation, placed in circumstances similar to those of Spain-^ij: They applied this doctrine to themselves, and either could not, or
- A reference to the history of the year 1808, will shovF, that the only
title by which the first Spanish Juntas held their authority, was the no- mination of a mob, which, in each of the great cities, called, by acclama- tion, those persons, in whom it placed confidence, to assume the manage- ment of its alfairs. f Each assumed the title of " Junta Soberana de Espana y de las Indias." X Vide " Defence of Central Junta, by Jovellanos, in which he as- sumes, as his second undeniable axiom, " That a people, seeing its exis- tence threatened, and knowing that the ministers of that authority, which ought to direct and defend it, are either intimidated or suborned, is necessarily driven to self-defence, and acquires an extraordinary and legitimate right of insurrection." — 7th October, 1808. VOL. I. H
