Fifty of the rabble, who had been most conspicuous for violence, were seized by the volunteers of Cadiz, and imprisoned. The Central Junta addressed a proclamation to the people of that city, reprehending them with dignified severity for their conduct. “It was absurd,” they said, “to apprehend danger in so populous and so brave a city from a single battalion of foreigners, even if there could be any reason to doubt the fidelity of Poles and Germans, who had been forcibly dragged into Spain, and were in every quarter deserting from the flag under which they had been compelled to march. As little reason was there for their suspicion of the Marquis. His papers were now before the Junta, and nothing was expressed in them but zeal for the country, and diligence to promote all means for the security of Cadiz. Let the state of those means before his arrival be compared with the works projected and executed since. And had the people no other way of manifesting their disapprobation than by tumult? No one came to the Junta to complain of the Marquis’s conduct; no one informed them that their commissioner at Cadiz had lost the confidence of the people. Some anonymous letters only had reached the government, some on one side, some on the other, but all contemptible in the eye of equity. But what was the course which would have become the open and generous character of the Spaniards? To have made their complaint frankly and nobly, and the government would have done them justice.” The Junta then warned them to beware of the insidious arts of the enemy. “It is not,” said they, “the traitors who fled with the French and returned with them who do most injury to their country; but it is the obscure agitators, hired by them or by the tyrant, who abuse the confidence and mislead the patriotism of the people. It is they who, disseminating distrust and suspicion, lead you through crooked and guilty paths to the precipice, and to subjugation; it is they who convert loyalty into rage, and zeal into sedition. The Junta have proofs enough of these infernal machinations in the intelligence which they receive every day, and in the correspondence which they intercept.” But, notwithstanding the government declared its persuasion of Villel’s innocence, it was not thought proper completely to exculpate him without such farther inquiry as might satisfy the people: this proclamation, therefore, announced that a commission would be appointed to examine his conduct, and that it would not be composed of members of the Central Junta, in order to avoid all shadow of partiality in an affair so serious. “Any person,” said the Junta, “shall be heard who desires to accuse him, and the sentence will be adjudged according to law. He himself demands in justice that this may be done; his honour, the estimation of the government, and the public satisfaction, necessarily prescribe it. If the Marquis be culpable, he shall be punished in proportion to his abuse of the high functions