The decree, by which the Regents were declared responsible, produced a memorial from them, requesting to know what were the obligations annexed to that responsibility, and what the specific powers which were given them; “unless these things,” they said, “were clearly and distinctly determined, the Regency would not know how to act, inasmuch as the ancient laws had drawn no line of distinction between the two powers; and thus they must be continually in danger, on the one hand, of exerting an authority, which, in the opinion of the Cortes, might not be included in the attributes of the executive, or, on the other, of omitting to exert the powers which it involves, and which at this time were more necessary than ever.” The reply of the Cortes proved with how little forethought they had passed their decree. “They had not limited,” they said, “the proper faculties of the executive, and the Regency was to use all the power necessary for the defence, security, and administration of the state, till the Cortes should mark out the precise bounds of its authority. The responsibility,” they added, “to which the Regents were subjected, was only meant to exclude that absolute inviolability which appertained to the sacred person of the king.” The whole of a night-session was occupied in forming this answer. Among the many erroneous opinions which prevailed in this country respecting the affairs of Spain, the most plausible and the most general was that which expected great immediate benefit from the convocation of the Cortes; an error from which, perhaps, no person was entirely free, except the few, who, like Mr. Frere, looked to the assembly rather with apprehensions of evil than with hope. But any great immediate advantage, any rapid acceleration of the deliverance of Spain, ought not to have been expected, unless it was supposed that the Spanish deputies would proceed like the French national convention, and that a revolutionary delirium might have produced a preternatural and overpowering strength. There was as little reason to look for this, as there could be for desiring it. The Spaniards, more than any other Europeans, are attached to the laws and customs of their country. Spain is to them literally a holy land; and its history, being composed for many ages of a tissue of connected miracles, to the greater part of the people sanctifies its institutions. But unless the Cortes took the executive power into its own hands, and gave the nation a revolutionary impulse, which all circumstances forbade, it might have been known that the benefits to be expected would produce little or no immediate effect upon the operations of the war: if that assembly acted wisely they would be slow, certain, and permanent.