446 PUBLIC PAPERS. The three Official Notes sent by Russia, Austria, and Prussia to their respective Ministers at Madrid, preparatory to the French Invasion. Despatch from the Count De Nesselrode to the Chargé d'Affaires of Russia at Madrid, dated Verona, the 14th (26th) Nov. 1822. THE Sovereigns and the Plenipotentiaries assembled at Verona, in the firm intention of consolidating more and more the peace which Europe enjoys, and to prevent whatever might tend to compromise that state of general tranquillity, were led, from the first moment of their assembling, to direct their anxious and serious attention towards an ancient monarchy, which had been agitated with internal commotions during two years, and which could not but excite, in an equal degree, the solicitude, the interest, and the apprehension of other Powers. When in the month of March, 1820, some perjured soldiers turned their arms against their Sovereign and their country, to impose upon Spain laws which the public reason of Europe, enlightened by the experience of all ages, stamped with its highest disapprobation, the Allied Cabinets, and particularly that of St. Petesburgh, hastened to point out the calamities that would follow in the train of institutions which consecrated military revolt, by the very mode of their establishment. These fears were but too soon and too thoroughly justified. They are no longer theories nor principles which are now to be examined and approved. Facts speak aloud; and what feeling must they not inspire in every Spaniard who yet cherishes a love for his King and country? What regret must be experienced at the ascendancy of the men who have brought about the Spanish Revolution? At the moment when a deplorable success crowned their enterprise, the integrity of the Spanish Monarchy was the object of the Spanish Government. The whole nation participated in the wishes of his Catholic Majesty; all Europe had offered him an amicable intervention to restore for him, on solid bases, the authority of the mother country over distant regions which formerly constituted her wealth and her strength. Encouraged, by a fatal example, to persevere in rebellion, the provinces where it had already broken out found in the events of the month of March the best apology for disobedience; and those which had yet remained faithful immediately separated from the mother country, justly afraid of the despotism which was about to oppress its unfortunate sovereign, and a people whom rash innovations condemned to traverse the whole range of revolutionary disasters. To the disorders of America were soon added the evils that are are inseparable from a state of things where the conservative principle of social order had been forgotten. Anarchy appeared in the train of revolution; disorder in the train of anarchy. Long years of tranquil possession soon ceased to be a sufficient title to property; the most sacred rights were soon disputed; ruinous loans, and contributions unceasingly renewed, soon attacked both public wealth and the fortunes of private individuals. As was the case at that epoch, the bare recollection of which makes Europe shudder, religion was despoiled of her patrimony; the throne, of popular respect; the royal dignity was outraged; and authority was transferred to assemblies where the blind passions of the multitude seized upon the reins of government. Lastly, and to complete the parallel with those days of calamity so unhappily reproduced in Spain, on the 7th of July blood was seen to flow in the palace of the King, and a civil war raged throughout the Peninsula. During nearly three years, the Allied Powers continued to flatter themselves that the Spanish character-that character so constant and so generous when the safety of the country was in quession, and lately so heroic when it struggled against a power produced by revolution-would show itself at last, even in the men who had had the misfortune to betray the noble recollections which Spain might proudly recall to every nation in Europe. They flattered themselves that the Government of his Catholic Majesty, undeceived by the first lessons of a fatal experience, would adopt measures, if not to stop by one common effort the numerous calamities which were bursting upon them from all sides, at least to lay the foundations of a remedial system, and to secure gradually to the throne its legitimate rights and its necessary prerogatives; also to give to subjects adequate protection, and to property indispensable guarantees. But those hopes have been utterly falsified. The lapse of time has only brought with it fresh injustice; violence has been increased; the number of victims has frightfully augmented; and Spain has already seen more than one warrior, and more than one faithful citizen, hurried to the scaffold. It is thus that the revolution of the 9th March went on, day by day, hastening the ruin of the Spanish Monarchy, when two particular events occurred which excited the most serious attention of Foreign Governments. In the midst of a people to whom devotion to their Kings is an he-reditary sentiment-a people who for six successive years shed the noblest blood to recover their legi timate Monarch - that Monarch and his family were reduced to a state of notorious and almost abso→ lute captivity. His brothers, compelled to justify themselves, were daily menaced with the dungeon or the axe; and imperious commands forbade him, with his dying wife, to quit the capital. On the other hand, in imitation of the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont, which the Spanish conspirators constantly represent as their own work, we hear them announce that their plans of subversion have no limits. In a neighbouring country they strove with unremitting perseverance to encou rage rage tumults and rebellion. In more distant states they laboured to create accomplices: the activity of their proselytism was every where felt, and every where it produced the same disasters. Such conduct would, of necessity, excite general reprobation. Those Cabinets which sincerely desired the good of Spain, intimated during two years their sentiments, by the nature of the relations which they maintain with its government. France saw herself obliged to confide to an army the protection of her frontiers; and probably she will be compelled also to confide to it the task of putting an end to those provocations which have rendered it necessary. Spain herself has rebelled, in some parts, against a system which is foreign to her habits, to her known loyalty, and to her entirely monarchical traditions. In this state of things, the Emperor, our august master, has determined to take a step which cannot leave to the Spanish nation any doubt as to his true intentions nor as to the sincerity of the wishes he entertains in her behalf. It is to be feared that the dangers arising from vicinity, which are always imminent, those which menace the Royal Family, and the just complaints of a neighbouring state, will terminate in creating between him and Spain the most grave embarrassments. It is this painful extremity which his Majesty would avoid, if possible; but, as long as the King is not in a condition to express freely his will; as long as a deplorable order of things facilitates the efforts of the artists of revolutions, who are united by one common bond with those of the other countries of Europe, to trouble its repose, -is it in the power of the Emperor, is it in the power of any Monarch, to ameliorate the relations of the Spanish Government with Foreign Powers? On the other hand, how easy would it be to attain this essential end, if the King recovered, with his perfect liberty, the means of putting an end to civil war, of preventing a foreign war, and of surrounding himself with the most enlightened and the most faithful of his subjects, in order to give to Spain those institutions which her wants and her legitimate wishes require. Then, free and tranquil, she could not but inspire Europe with the security which she would herself enjoy; and then, too, the Powers which now protest against the conduct of her Government would be eager to renew with her relations truly amicable, and founded upon mutual good-will. It is a long time since Russia announced these grand truths to the attention of Spaniards. Never had their patriotism higher destinies to fulfil than at this moment. What glory for them to conquer revolution a second time, and to prove that it can never exercise dominion in a country where ancient virtues, an indelible attachment to principles which guarantee the duration of society, and respect for a holy religion, will always triumph over anarchical doctrines, and the artifices employed to extend their fatal influence. Already one portion of the nation has declared itself. It only remains for the other portion to unite instantly with their King, to deliver Spain -to save it-to assign it, in the great European family, a place SO so much the more honourable, because it would be snatched, as in 1814, from the disastrous triumph of military usurpation. In directing you, M. le Comte, to communicate to the Ministers of his Most Catholic Majesty, the sentiments developed in this despatch, his Majesty is willing to believe, that neither his intentions, nor those of his allies, will be misinterpreted. In vain will malevolence endeavour to represent them in the light of foreign interference, which seeks to dictate laws to Spain. To express the desire of seeing a protracted misery terminate, to snatch from the same yoke an unhappy Monarch and one the first among European nations, to stop the effusion of blood, and to facilitate the re-establishment of an order of things at once wise and national, is certainly not attacking the independence of a country, nor establishing a right of intervention against which any power whatever would have reason to protest. If his Imperial Majesty had other views, it would rest with him and his Allies to let the Spanish revolution complete its work. Very soon, every germ of prosperity, of wealth, and of power, would be destroyed in the Peninsula; and if the Spanish nation can suppose these hostile designs to be entertain. ed, they should look for the proof of their existence in the indifference and the inaction of the Allies. The reply that will be made to the present declaration must decide questions of the very highest importance. Your instructions from this day will point out the determination that you are to make, if the dispositions of the public authority at Madrid reject the means 1823. which are offered for securing to Spain a future tranquillity, and an imperishable glory. Despatch of M. the Prince de Metternich, to the Chargé d'Affaires of Austria at Madrid, dated Verona, Dec. 14th, 1822. The situation in which the Spanish monarchy finds itself, in consequence of the events which have transpired in that State during the last two years, was an object of too paramount importance not to have seriously occupied the attention of the Cabinets assembled at Verona. The Emperor, our august master, has desired that you should be informed of the view which he takes of this momentous question; and it is to fulfil his desire that I address to you the present despatch. The revolution of Spain was judged for us from its origin. Conformably to eterual decrees, good can never arise to States, any more than to individuals, from a disregard of the first duties imposed upon man in social order: the amelioration of the condition of subjects should not be commenced by criminal illusions, by perverting opinion, and by misleading the conscience; and military revolt can never form the basis of a happy and durable government. The revolution of Spain, considered solely in regard to the destructive influence which it has exercised over the kingdom which has experienced it, would be an event worthy the undivided attention and interest of foreign sovereigns, for the prosperity or the ruin of one of the most interesting States of Europe cannot be in their eyes an indifferent alternative; only the enemies of Spain, if possibly 2 F she she have any, could be capable of regarding, unmoved, the convulsions which prey upon her. A just repugnance, however, to meddle with the internal affairs of an independent nation, would perhaps influence these Sovereigns not to pronounce on the situation of Spain, if the evil operated by her revolution was concentrated, or could be concentrated, within her territorial limits. But this is not the case: this revolution, even before it ar rived at maturity, had been the cause of great disasters in other States; it was this revolution which, by the contagion of its principles and of its example, and by the intrigues of its principal partisans, created the Revolutions of Naples and Piedmont; it was this revolution which would have excited insurrections throughout Italy, menaced France, and compromised Germany, but for the intervention of the powers which preserved Europe from this new conflagration. Every where the destructive means employed in Spain, to prepare and consummate the revolution, have served as a model to those who flattered themselves that they were paving the way to new conquests. Every where the Spanish Constitution has become the rallying point and the war-whoop of a faction, combined alike against the security of thrones and the repose of subjects. The dangerous impulse which the Spanish revolution had given to the whole South of Europe, placed Austria under the painful necessity of having recourse to measures which ill accorded with the pacific course which she would desire invariably to pursue. She has witnessed a portion of her do minions surrounded by sedition, fettered by incendiary plots, and on the very eve of being attacked by conspirators, whose first efforts were directed against the frontiers. It was only by great efforts and great sacrifices that Austria succeeded in re-establishing tranquillity in Italy, and in defeating projects, the success of which would have been any thing but indifferent as to the fate of ber own provinces. Besides, in the questions relative to Spain, bis Imperial Majesty cannot do otherwise than support the same principles which he has always so decidedly manifested. Even in the absence of any direct danger to the people confided to his care, the Emperor will never hesitate to disavow and reprove what he thinks false and culpable, in regard to the general interests of human society. Faithful to the system of preservation and peace, for the maintenance of which he has contracted inviolable engagements with his august Allies, his Majesty will never cease to consider disorder and subversions, whatever portion of Europe may be the victim of them, as an object of deep solicitude for all governments; and whenever the Emperor can make his views manifest amid the tumult of these deplorable crises, he shall think that he has fulfilled a duty with which no consideration can induce him to dispense. It would be difficult for me to believe, M. le Comte, that the declared judgment of his Imperial Majesty on the events which are passing in Spain can be misunderstood or misinterpreted in that country. No object of private interest-no conflict of reciprocal pretension no senti ment |