e of this comprehensive--this
constitutional--this saving and majestic Assembly. Far be it from me to
speak of the Supreme Junta with ill-advised condemnation: every man must
feel for the distressful trials to which that Body has been exposed. But
eighty men or a hundred, with a king at their head veiled under a cloud
of fiction (we might say, with reference to the difficulties of this
moment, begotten upon a cloud of fiction), could not be an image of a
Nation like that of Spain, or an adequate instrument of their power for
their ends. The Assembly, from the smallness of its numbers, must have
wanted breadth of wing to extend itself and brood over Spain with a
quickening touch of warmth every where. If also, as hath been mentioned,
there was a want of experience to determine the judgment in choice of
persons; this same smallness of numbers must have unnecessarily
increased the evil--by excluding many men of worth and talents which
were so far known and allowed as that they would surely have been
deputed to an Assembly upon a larger scale. Gratitude, habit, and
numerous other causes must have given an undue preponderance to birth,
station, rank, and fortune; and have fixed the election, more than was
reasonable, upon those who were most conspicuous for these
distinctions;--men whose very virtue would incline them superstitiously
to respect established things, and to mistrust the People--towards whom
not only a frank confidence but a forward generosity was the first of
duties. I speak not of the vices to which such men would be liable,
brought up under the discipline of a government administered like the
old Monarchy of Spain: the matter is both ungracious and too obvious.

But I began with hope; and hope has inwardly accompanied me to the end.
The whole course of the campaign, rightly interpreted, has justified my
hope. In Madrid, in Ferrol, in Corunna, in every considerable place, and
in every part of the country over which the French have re-extended
their dominion,--we learn, from their own reports, that the body of the
People have shewed against them, to the last, the most determined
hostility. Hence it is clear that the lure, which the invading Usurper
found himself constrained lately to hold out to the inferior orders of
society in the shape of various immunities, has totally failed: and
therefore he turns for support to another quarter, and now attempts to
cajole the wealthy and the privileged. But this class has