“The Central Junta was installed, and its first care was to announce, that if the expulsion of the enemy was the first object of its attention in point of time, the permanent welfare of the state was the principal in importance; for to leave it sunk in the sea of old abuses, would be a crime as enormous as to deliver you into the hands of Buonaparte; therefore, as soon as the whirlwind of war permitted, it resounded in your ears the name of the Cortes, which has ever been the bulwark of civil freedom; a name heretofore pronounced with mystery by the learned, with distrust by politicians, and with horror by tyrants; but which henceforth in Spain will be the indestructible basis of the monarchy, the most secure support of the rights of Ferdinand and his family, a right for the people, and an obligation for the government. That moral resistance, which has reduced our enemies to confusion and despair in the midst of their victories, must not receive a less reward. Those battles which are lost, those armies which are destroyed; those soldiers who, dispersed in one action, return to offer themselves for another; that populace which, despoiled of almost all they possessed, returned to their homes to share the wretched remains of their property with the defenders of their country; that struggle of barbarity on the one hand, and of invincible constancy on the other, present a whole as terrible as magnificent, which Europe contemplates with astonishment, and which history will one day record, for the admiration and example of posterity. A people so generous ought only to be governed by laws which bear the great character of public consent and common utility, ... a character which they can only receive by emanating from the august assembly which has been announced to you.”