491
PAPERS OF MIRABEAU BuoNAPARTE LAMAR
ion of the Colonies was vested jn the Crown and not in the State; and it follows as a matter of course, that when the monarchy was destroyed, the King captured, and the nation left without a government, it be- longed as much to the Colonies as to the Mother Country, to look to their own immediate security, and to decide upon their future policy. Their allegiance to the King, terminated with his dethronement and the extinction of his power; and so did that of all the inhabitants of' the Peninsula. If latter, or any portion of them, might determine upon a counter-revolution, for the purpose of rlethroneing the King de facto, and reinstating the imprisoned :Monarch, they possessed the right to organize a Junta, and to invest it with necessary powers to carry out their designs; but surely any attempt on the part of such junta to prohibit the Colonies doing the same thing, for the same purpose, would be an intolerable wrong which might almost cause the stones to rise in mutiny. Yet such was the position assumed by the Junta of Seville towards the Colonies. That body not only demanded their allegiance, but denounced and punished as open rebellion an attempt , to imitate the mother country in a policy which was held up to the admiration of the peninsulars. Thus do we see that what was patriot- ism in the parent country, was treason in the Colonies. And all this was done in the name of a King who was powerless and in the hands of his enemies-a king without a crown, whose reign was over, and whose royal prerogatives had passed into the possession of another.- The reader cannot fail to perceive, from this exposition of affairs, that the conduct of the Spanish authorities .towards Mexico at this critical epoch (1808) was based upon the old maxim, always con- tended for, "that while a Castillan Cobler remained in the Peninsula, he had a right to govern the Americas." The Creoles were regarded as belonging to the Spanish race, subject alone to their dictation, and were no more entitled than the brute creation, to the exercise of any political rights and privileges whatever. This was one of the funda- mental principles of the Colonial System-a system which had been persevered in from the conquest of the country to the captivity of Fer- dinand; but one whose rigid enforcement was unsuited to the stormy and revolutionary period of which we speak; and still less adapted to the advanced condition of the Creoles, who inspite of all the efforts of the government to the contrary, had become sufficiently enlightened by the progress of general knowledge, to entitle them to be governed by some of the principles of humanity and justice.amicroft '[]bmry The Spaniards, however, contended that any relaxation .of their· Colonial System would be equivalent to a total surrender of the sys- tem itself. The principle of self-go,·ernment, once admitted into the Colonies, would prove an inextinguishable greek-fire which. would dif- fuse itself without limitation and might be as easily directed against a domestic tirant as against a foreign usurper. If the Colonies were allowed, like the.. peninsula, to organize a resistance to King Joseph, they might be emboldened, after a while, to do the same to King Ferdinand, or to any other unacceptable authority. In the opinion of the Gachupins, no calamity could befall the nation, equal to that of its removal by the Creoles. The duty of these was limited to that of simply obeying and paying; and all aspirations beyond, were treason and rebellion.
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