its legality, when it exiles itself from its proper abode. At the best it casts a slur on the inhabitants of the capital by refusing to trust itself among them. Madrid, it is true, is not to Spain what Paris is to France, or London to England: it is a comparatively modern place, pitched upon by Philip II as the seat of his court, but destitute of ancient memories. Nevertheless, it was at least infinitely superior to Aranjuez as a meeting-place. On geographical or strategical grounds they are so close that no advantage accrues to one that does not belong to the other. But for political reasons the capital was distinctly preferable to the almost suburban palace[359]. If the existence of the Council of Castile so much disturbed the Junta, it would have been quite possible to dissolve that discredited body. No one would have made any serious effort in its favour, even in the city of its abode. [358] Note the federalist views of the Aragonese Miguel Principe, quoted by Arteche (ii. 121). [359] Both Florida Blanca and Jovellanos were in favour of making Madrid the meeting-place. The Andalusians defeated them. SECTION VI: CHAPTER III THE ‘JUNTA GENERAL’ IN SESSION The provincial Juntas, when once they had consented to sacrifice their local sovereignty, made no great delay in forwarding their representatives to the chosen meeting-place at Aranjuez. The number of deputies whom they sent to the Supreme Central Junta was thirty-five, seventeen provincial Juntas each contributing two, and the Canary Islands one. The Biscayan provinces, still wholly in the possession of the French, had no local body to speak for them, and could not therefore choose deputies. The number thus arrived at was not a very convenient one: thirty-five is too few for a parliament, and too many for an executive government. Moreover proportional representation was not secured; Navarre and the Balearic Islands were given too much weight by having two members each. Andalusia, having eight deputies for its four Juntas of Seville, Jaen, Granada, and Cordova, was over-represented when compared with Galicia, Aragon, and Catalonia, which had each no more than two. The quality of the delegates was very various: among the most notable were the ex-ministers Florida Blanca and Jovellanos, who represented respectively the better sides of the Conservative and the Liberal parties of Spain--if we may use such terms. The former, trained in the school of ‘benevolent despotism’ under Charles III, was a good specimen of the eighteenth-century statesman of the old sort--polite, experienced, energetic, a ripe scholar, and an able diplomat. But he was eighty years old and failing in health, and his return to active politics killed him in a few months. Jovellanos, a somewhat younger man[360], belonged in spirit to the end rather than the middle of the eighteenth century, and was imbued with the ideas of liberty and constitutional government which