168
TEXAS STATE LtBR.\RY
who discredited you, and who would have shot you if they had cap- tured you. Do you believe, my gencrnl, that these men will confide in you f and that you can confide in them? I <lo not speak of those contemptible mountebanks who change their opinions as they do their clotl1cs. Thoc;e do not merit attention more than to despise them and to pity those who confide in them; bnt I do speak of tho!'.e people interested in sustaining the interests and privileges incom patiltlc with the order of things adopted, and determined in desfrin~ to make stationary the customs. beliefs, and prejudices of the time of Galvez nnd Branciforti.-\Vhat has made you victorious from 1821 until April 1834¥-The liberal principles, the cause which you hiwe defended. If you turn your back on them, you will say as did Napoleon: "The liberal ideas, not the Holy Alliance, have con- quer~d me."-1'\or for a similar conduct would the accusation made by you .of the errors and disorders of the ,populace be an excuse. Is it that you ignored the fact that the popular party was unquiet and turbulent, and that it would he difficult to direct iH Have you not been. among both, and had sufficient time to measure their move- ments, know their faults, study their tendencies? Undoubtedly you have, and ,I myself have heard you say several times that you pre- ferred those which the rabble calls the aristocratic party to those who are called honest men. In this day you cannot continue in the false p:sition in which you hm·e placed yourself. ·without a Con- gress, without a Cabinet, in op~n conflict wHh the states, and sus- tained only by material force and a small number of aristocrulic pretenders, it is necessary that you follow .an extraordinary course, that your resolutions be extraordinary. and that all your measure,; be out of the usnal order of things-a difficult situation, thorny nnd full of danger! llow shall you get out of it 1 An appeal to the public made in good faith, the calling of a numerous assembly, truly called national, surrounded by the novel prestige, by the respect which they attract by the lights, the services, the wealth, the virtue, the firm merit. Call the different contending parties together by means oE their representatives, and discuss rationally in the ball that which is today the object of the war measures in the field. Sho,v them your position far from ~Iexico, far from all fear of arms, or the pernicions influence of military or ecclesiastical power; powers of exclusion, of privilege, and consequently based on brutal force, or on deceit and ignorance. In my opinion, the Constitution of the year 1824 l1as lost ull its force. Jn its principles it was purely factitious; force of illusion. It was supported hy pretext of revolutions, and finally it was contcmn<'d with them. The nation needs reconstruction. But there :ire ccrtni11 J,ascs upon which it is necessary to build a new social body. One of 1hesc is derived from the position of onr territory: this is the form of union. The others arc common to all countries which liit\'C a l'<'Jl- rcscntativc government, nnd they arc liberty of the press, riitht of trial by jury, indivirlunl liberty. the dfrision of power nnd the ex- chequer, nncl the more or less nmple dC'clarntions of individual nnd social rights. You, my General, and Don Carlos, the Pretender of Spniu, nrc the
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