these again, deputing members of their own body to form a Central Junta, which was entrusted with the supreme command. They heard this course not only justified by the sages of the nation, but admired by the world, and pronounced by one whose name they had been taught to respect, (Don Gaspar Jŏvĕllānŏs,) "to be the undeniable and strictly natural right of any nation, placed in circumstances similar to those of Spain."[1] They applied this doctrine to themselves, and either could not, or would not, understand the soundness of the reasoning, by which a measure, that was allowed to have been productive of the most beneficial results in the Peninsula, could be constructed into absolute treason on the opposite side of the Atlantic.[2]
Their perception of their own rights was quickened by a deep sense of the grievances under which
- ↑ Vide "Defence of Central Junta, by Jovellanos," in which he assumes, as his second undeniable axiom, "That a people, seeing its existence 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.
- ↑ It is impossible too strongly to insist upon the fact, that all the proceedings of the American Independents were but a transcript of those which had taken place in the Mother country. They applied to the Cortes, at a later period, the very principles which the Cortes applied to Ferdinand VII; and refused to submit to that despotism, in the hands of a popular assembly, which was admitted by that assembly to be intolerable, while in the hands of a monarch.
