Towards the latter end of September this great assembly met, and immediately took the title of Majesty: it afterwards declared the press free in respect of political, but not of religious matters, abolished some of the provincial juntas, re-appointed captains-general, and proceeded to form a constitution worded in the spirit of republican freedom. These things, aided by a vehement eloquence, drew much attention to the proceedings of the Cortes, and a fresh impulse seemed given to the war: but men brought up under despotism do not readily attain the fashions of freedom. The Provincial Junta, the Central Junta, the Junta of Cadiz, the Regency, had all been, in succession, violent and tyrannical in act, while claiming only to be popular leaders, and this spirit did not desert the Cortes. Abstract principles of liberty were freely promulgated, yet tyrannical and partial proceedings were of common occurrence; and the reformations, by outstripping the feelings and understandings of the nation, weakened the main springs of its resistance to the French. It was not for liberty, but for national pride and from religious influence, that the people struck. Freedom had no attractions for the nobles, nor for the monastics, nor even for the merchants; and the Cortes, in suppressing old establishments and violating old forms and customs, wounded powerful interests, created active enemies, and shocked those very prejudices which had produced resistance to Napoleon. In the administration of the armies, in the conduct of the war, in the execution of the laws, and the treatment of the colonies, there was as much of vanity, of intrigue, of procrastination, negligence, folly, and violence as before. Hence the people were soon discontented; and when the power of the religious orders was openly attacked by a proposition to abolish the inquisition, the clergy became active enemies of the Cortes. The great cause of feudal privileges being once given up, the natural tendency of the Cortes was towards the enemy. A broad line of distinction was thus drawn between the objects of the Spanish and English governments in the prosecution of the war; and, ere the contest was finished, there was a schism between the British cabinet and the Spanish government, which would inevitably have thrown the latter into Napoleon’s hands, if fortune had not, at the moment, betrayed him in Russia.