never been any foundation for a persistent rumour that he was to be made co-regent along with the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo and the Conde de Montijo. Not even the least intelligent members of the Juntas would have consented to hand over the rule of Spain to this strange triumvirate--an imbecile, a boy, and a turbulent intriguer. There was about as much chance that another vain project might be carried out--an invitation to General Dumouriez to take command of all the Spanish armies. Yet this plan too was seriously brought forward: the Frenchman would not have been unwilling, but the Spanish officers, flushed with their recent successes, were not the kind of people to welcome a foreign leader, and one whose last military exploit had been to desert his own army and go over to the enemy. [354] See Arteche, iii. 118. [355] First cousin to Charles IV, being the son of the Infante Luis, and brother of Godoy’s unfortunate wife. [356] Napier is wrong in hinting that Canning lent himself to the Sicilian scheme (i. 177, 178) in order to disoblige Castlereagh. Collingwood’s dispatches show that he opposed it, as much as did Dalrymple, and thereby won approval from his government (_Collingwood Correspondence_, ii. 216, 217). [357] He sailed on Nov. 4 (_Madrid Gazette_). Much more specious, at first sight, than any project for the establishment of a regency, was the proposal mooted in many quarters for the summoning of the Cortes--whose name recalled so many ancient memories, and was connected with the days of constitutional freedom in the Middle Ages. But not only had the Cortes been obscured by the long spell of autocracy under the Hapsburg and Bourbon kings, but it was by its very constitution unsuited to represent a nation seeking for a new and vigorous executive. It was full of mediaeval anomalies: for example the Asturias had never been represented in it, but had possessed (like Wales in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) separate governmental machinery of its own. This might have been altered without much difficulty, but it was more fatal that the distribution of seats in the lower estates represented an archaic survival. Many decayed towns in Castile sent members to the Cortes, while on the other hand the warlike and populous province of Galicia had only one single vote. To rearrange the representation on a rational basis would take so long, and cause so much provincial jealousy, that it was recognized as practically impossible.