These were fair professions; nor were the intentions of the Central Junta less laudable than their language. Tilly alone excepted, the members were upright and honourable men, worthy to represent a nation distinguished for its high sense of honour. But they were unacquainted with each other, and except the President, Jovellanos, and Garay, wholly unused to business: for a national assembly too few, and for an executive government too many. Jovellanos was of opinion that they ought immediately to appoint a regency of five persons, one of them being a dignitary of the church, to be installed on the first day of the ensuing year: that the Central Junta should then be reduced to half its original number, retaining one member only of each deputation, for the purpose of watching over the observance of the constitution entrusted to the regency, and corresponding with the provincial Juntas, which should thenceforward consist of four members each: these were to exist as long as the Council of Regency; and the Central Junta of Correspondence, as it was then to be called, only till the meeting of the Cortes, which Jovellanos maintained ought immediately to be announced as to assemble as soon as the enemy should have been driven out of Spain, or, at all events, in two years from the present time, if the delivery of the country should not be accomplished before. He proposed also that the Junta, before it resigned its powers, should appoint persons qualified for such a task to prepare plans of reform in the constitution, laws, finance, system of public instruction, army, and marine; ... these plans were to be formed under the inspection and approbation of the Council of Regency and the Junta of Correspondence, and finally submitted to the Cortes. ♦1808. OCTOBER.♦ In delivering this advice, Jovellanos, to remove all suspicion of any interested views, repeated in writing the solemn declaration which he had before made by word of mouth, that he never would accept of any office or employment himself; the natural and invincible repugnance which he had ever felt for such preferment, the bitter price which he had paid for having once accepted it, in deference to a brother whom he respected like a parent, and the sad sense of decay both in his physical and moral powers, determined him to this resolution. The only duty which he would undertake to perform was ♦JOVELLANOS MEMORIA, P. II. § 33, 34. APPENDICES, NO. 5.♦ the noble one of simply delivering those opinions which he thought most conducive to the good of his country, in discharge of the high trust wherewith his own province had honoured him. ♦EXPECTATIONS FROM A CORTES.♦