“I well know that the sentiments I have expressed will not convince you, because they must be felt and not explained. For my justification I appeal to the inexorable tribunal of posterity, and to the secret police of the consciences of yourselves in the first place, of the Queen herself, and of this unhappy country. “A copy of this document is already on the road, and will be published, as you will see, in foreign countries. I also send it to other Madrid newspapers, although I believe that a miserable fear will prevent their publishing it. “That you may never be able to deny that I have sent you this letter, I have had formal registry made of it, and it perhaps will one day be published. I trust then that you will be sufficiently generous and gentlemanly[29] to insert it in your periodical, by doing which you will highly oblige me. (Signed) EL GENERAL DULCE. “Vallecas, 1st July 1854. “The original is to be found duly stamped in the register of this corporation, where it has been inserted against the will of the individuals composing it, who are exempt from all blame.” I need hardly say that the _Heraldo_ has not published this letter, of which numerous copies have been distributed in Madrid by friends of its writer, and by persons who believe that, as he himself says, he has “acted according to his conscience (_dado una satisfaccion à mi conciencia_), and who admire his disinterestedness—the rarest quality amongst public men in Spain. It is not easy to foretell the result of this insurrection, which has now lasted for fifteen days without any decisive or even important event. The country, taken by surprise, and ignorant of the objects of the outbreak—which it suspected to have been made merely to bring about a change of men, but not of system—looked on at first with apathy. O’Donnell’s greatest error was the first proclamation he issued, which, in many words, said nothing and held out no prospect of advantage to the people. Another has just appeared, short, pithy, explicit, and calculated to satisfy the liberal party. It promises the Spanish nation the benefits of the representative system, for which it has shed so much of its blood and made so many sacrifices, as yet without result.