Some of these persons signed the constitution, and accepted office because they were in a state. of duresse; some because they were regardless of every thing except their own interest, and cared not whom they served so they might serve themselves; others attached themselves faithfully to the intrusive King, because they miscalculated the resistance which could be opposed, and having chosen their part, adhered to it with miserable fidelity through all the odious and dreadful consequences in which they were involved. These persons had hoped to form a social contract with the new King; and to obtain for their country that regular and constitutional freedom, the want of which had drawn on its long degradation and decline. Of that hope they were speedily undeceived. The constitution which they sanctioned, and which was published to the Spaniards as their act and deed, was intended in all its parts and provisions to establish a government not less despotic than that which it was to supersede. By the composition of the Cortes two of the three estates of the realm retained the name indeed, and the semblance of honour, but were divested of any real power, their united members forming not a third part of the chamber. Spain was indeed in no condition to be trusted with a popular assembly; but a Cortes chosen and restricted like this of the Bayonne constitution, was obviously designed for no other purpose than to delude the people with a venerable name, and carry into effect, under a show of freedom, the will and pleasure of the Monarch. The regulations which pretended to provide for the liberty of the press were in like manner deceptive. All that they did was to afford some protection against the stupid bigotry of the Inquisition; such works as Fray Gerundio would not be proscribed while the author could appeal to a senatorial Junta; but nothing which distinguishes a free press, and which constitutes its value, ... nothing which, as it were, embodies public opinion, and gives it its due and salutary weight, could have passed the double ordeal to which it was subjected. The provisions in favour of the liberty of the subject bore about the same relation to our Habeas Corpus, as this superintended freedom of the press to its actual state in England. The Napoleon Habeas Corpus of the Bayonne constitution established in reality a perpetual suspension for interests of state; and where it was to take effect, it was not as an absolute and fundamental law, but by a reference to the sovereign’s discretion. ♦LETTER FROM FERDINAND TO THE INTRUDER.♦