[10] For the text of this wordy proclamation see Wellesley’s _Spanish Dispatches_, pp. 135-9. [11] Note the extraordinary similarity of this plan to that produced by the Athenian oligarchs in 411 B. C. Had some one been reading Thucydides? Any effect which the report of the Commission might have had, was spoilt by the fact that it was followed by a minority report, or manifesto, drawn up by the Marquis of La Romana, who had been one of the Commissioners. The Junta had called him back from Galicia, and compelled him to surrender the army that he had re-formed, under the pretext that he had been co-opted as a member of their own body. A death-vacancy had been created in the representation of the kingdom of Valencia: he had been named to fill it, summoned to Seville, and placed on the constitutional Commission. Dissenting from every word of the report of the majority, he published on October 14 a counter-scheme, in which he declared that the venality, nepotism, and dilatory incapacity of the Junta made it necessary for Spain to seek a new executive which should be wholly independent of that body. Accordingly he suggested that a Regency of five members should be constituted, as the supreme governing body of the realm. No member of the Junta was to sit therein. It was to be assisted, for consultative purposes, by a body of six persons--one of whom was to be a South American. This second committee, to be called ‘the Permanent Deputation of the Realm,’ was to be considered to represent the Cortes till that assembly should meet. It was not to meddle with executive matters, but was to devote itself to drawing up the details of the constitution of the future Cortes, and to suggesting practical reforms.