The most notorious of those, however, who co-operated to establish that fatal and ferocious despotism which now degrades and oppresses Spain, have already become its victims. In their sorrow and suffering and exile, let the unshaken friends of constitutional liberty, who are scattered over Europe, console themselves with remembering that their personal fate is no more severe than that of the base tools of a wretched monarch, who have nothing to accompany their wanderings but sadness, shame and self-reproach, dark and barren prospects, and desolate remembrances; while _those_ shall receive from all around them, the smiles and the praises of the wise and good. They may look back on the “bread” of virtue which they have “cast on the waters,” and forward in the confident hope that they “shall find it again after many days:” but they who sacrificed their country to their cold-hearted and selfish avarice, have wholly erred in their calculations. Their country is fallen indeed, but they, too, have been buried in its ruins. Ferdinand, who has just as much of gratitude as of any other virtue, {12} has already trampled on the miserable tools of his early tyranny. It were well if those who “put their trust in princes,” would study the many impressive lessons which the reign of the Spanish tyrant affords. It is consolatory to turn from the profligacy and vice so often prominent amidst extraordinary political revolutions, to the spirit of truth and liberty which they always elicit; and Spain has had a most triumphant list of patriots. Their names must not be recorded: for, to receive the tribute of affection and gratitude from any hater of a tyrant, would be sufficient to subject them to his merciless ferocity. How wretched that country where no meed of applause may follow the track of talent or of virtue—where knowledge and the love of freedom are pursued and persecuted as if they were curses and crimes! Otherwise, with what delight should I speak of some who, buried in the obscurity of the cloister, or retiring into solitude from the noisy crowd, sigh in secret and silence over the wretched fate of the land of their birth, their admirable powers of body and mind fettered and frozen by the hand of despotism! All around them is slavery and ignorance; to them remain alone the joy of holding converse with the wise and the good of departed time, and the ecstatic hope that their country will one day burst from its death-like slumbers, and spring forth “into liberty and life and light.”