Thus having admitted that public opinion was the proper and indispensable check upon the proceedings of Government, the Cortes instituted a board nominated by Government to be a check upon public opinion, which, if the measure had not been merely nugatory, would have virtually destroyed the freedom it pretended to establish. But they were dealing with no easy subject. ♦STATE OF THE PRESS.♦ The press, like other prisoners, had broken loose when the old system was overthrown. It had effected the momentous service of rousing the nation, and it continued to keep up the spirit which it had excited; but as for exercising any salutary restraint upon the proceedings of the Government, this was of all things what the public writers were least competent to do, and the men in power least likely to tolerate. The danger was, that the press might now, at the same time, inflame and misdirect the public mind; a work for which eager volunteers are never wanting in such times. The Spaniards had taken arms to defend their institutions, to which with all their enormous abuses the people were devoutly attached. The best and wisest men wished to reform those abuses. Such men were few, and aiming only at what was lawful and just, they scrupled at any evil means for bringing it about. The party who were for destroying root and branch had no such principle to impede them. Despotism had made them republicans, and an abominable superstition had driven them into unbelief. They also were few, but they were more numerous than men whose opinions rested upon a safer ground; they were bold and they were indefatigable, acting like some of the early propagandists and victims of the French revolution, in the enthusiastic belief that nothing but good could result from the subversion of corrupted establishments. Even in the Cortes there were some who looked to the most dreadful stage of that revolution rather as an example than a warning. One member wished for what he called a Christian Robespierre to save the country; another, for _un pequeño Robespierre_, one who would carry on a system of terror ♦DIARIO DE LAS CORTES, T. 2. 441. T. 4. 371.♦ with a little more moderation than had been used in France; caustics they said were called for; matters must be carried on with energy and with blood, or the country was lost; heads must be stricken off, and that speedily; it was necessary to shed more Spanish blood than French. When such language was uttered in the Cortes, and circulated in the diaries of that assembly, it was, indeed, most necessary that efficient measures should be taken for restraining the license of the press. A journal was published under the ♦EL ROBESPIERRE ESPAÑOL.♦ title of “The Spanish Robespierre,” breathing the same spirit as these speeches. One of its numbers was suppressed: the fanatical author exclaimed against this as an outrage upon the sacred, the divine, the omnipotent liberty of the press. “I swear,” said he,