Richmond Enquirer

ADDRESS TO THE SPANISH PEOPLE.

Madrid, May 12.—(On the 2nd of this month, the Provisional Junta addressed, to the Spanish people, the following discourse, remarkable alike for the elevation and eloquence of the thoughts, and the energy and eloquence of the diction.)

"Citizens! You are about to celebrate the national festival of the memorable Second of May, 1808. This day is one of the most signal epochs of modern history. It operated to discover to the nations the secret of their power; to hurl a perfidious conqueror from his iron throne; to break the chains of vanquished and ensanguined Europe; to prepare the way for the empire of Reason and the Laws, which give rights and prescribe duties to the people and to the sovereign, fixing upon the principles of eternal justice, the liberty and prosperity of subjects, and the strength and glory of thrones. The cry of alarm which the dying victims uttered, was not only heard in Spain, but resounded throughout Europe: All Europe, whatever may be the tardiness of national reformation, will finally be indebted for the improvement of its several governments, to this day of lasting success with assured the triumph of Liberty through the sacrifice of the patriots whom we honour as the martyrs of her cause,

"Intrepid Spirits! Dear and venerated Manes: Your fellow citizens invoke you with a sacred enthusiasm: It pleased a beneficent Deity to accept your offering to the freedom of your country and monarch. The first, now rendered happy by her wise constitution; the second, covered with benedictions and glory for the re-establishment of that constitution scatter over your tombs the flowers of love and gratitude; consecrate your names to immortality, and mingle in the same urn tears of grief and joy. Welcome our recollections with the same tenderness which we feel in expressing them; and from your eternal mansion of life and beatitude, rejoice in the felicity which your country is about to reap, and which you may be said to have sown—rejoice still more that you left behind you a generation that has trodden in your footsteps, and will inflexibly imitate your example, if at any time our country or constitutional king should be brought into danger.—Present to the throne of Grace the vows and acknowledgments of a free and pious people.

"Citizens!

Assuage the sorrow which the recollection of the blood spilt on this day, must excite, by dwelling on the fair prospect of the goods which are in store for us, and of which we already begin to taste, just laws, consonant to the civilization of the age, were the object of our aspiration and the remedy for our ills; we possess them now, in our constitution; and we have obtained them, not as England did, by half a century of revolution and 500,000 victims; not as France did, at the expense of twenty-five years of excess and war—but with seven years of patience, a day of explanation, two days of jubilee. If to this gratifying consideration, you add the rapid, steady, advised march of our new institutions; the concord and unanimity happily reigning among all the provinces; the appointment of men of tried virtue and known ability, to the first offices of state; the fundamental regulations of reform adopted, not in a confused and precipitate manner, but with circumspection and according to opportunity; the restoration of public credit; the abolition of illegal or unjust impositions and charges; other and innumerable dispositions which in a short space of time have transmuted the genius of arbitrary government into a solid principle of constitutional order; the exaltation of public sentiment; the wonderful development of civic virtues; the quick progress of liberal ideas: the recovery of that estimation which we had lost with every nation of Europe, the cheering hope and certain knowledge of what that nation may become, which, in the lapse of only two months, and without the effusion of blood, has reached the goal attained by other nations only after ages of strife and slaughter—if you add all these things, citizens, you will find not only consolation for the massacre of this day, but motive for a noble pride and exultation, such as Sparta felt at the glorious death of the warriors whom Leonidas led to the pass of Thermopylae.

"Fulfil, then, the pious duties of this festival with the solemnity that becomes upright and devout minds; fortify your hearts by the contemplation of the noble example before you; heighten the admiration of the stranger at the transformation of Spain; let him see assembled multitudes without disorder; men free without insolence: religious without hypocrisy: bold yet prudent: passionate for their rights, but limiting their aims by human possibilities; modest in prosperity; obedient to the laws and zealous in their support; lovers of their king, not slaves of their lord. In fine, maintaining the sobriety and imposing calm which have hitherto contradistinguished our political revolution to all others, and shed so much lustre over our fortunate region; let us leave our posterity happy in the possession of a great example of moderation for them to imitate, and a body of just laws for them to preserve. The day is, perhaps, not far distant, when the foreigners who now, according to their particular mood, admire or disparage us, will repair hither as to a country of benediction, where may be enjoyed the true dignity of man; the regulated liberty which they, in their extravagance, were unable to consolidate; the integrity of hallowed laws which they knew not how to adapt to their character and habits."

(Signed)

L. DE BORBON

FRANCISCO BALLESTEROS, &c.