MY LORD,--I am just returned from the Isle of Leon where I had been to witness the opening of the Cortes, and am favoured with your Lordship’s letter of the 6th inst; the packet has orders to sail immediately upon receiving Mr. Wellesley’s despatches, which I am informed will be ready in less than an hour, so that I have only time to give your Lordship a very short and imperfect account of what has hitherto passed in the Cortes; such, however, as it is, I have no doubt but it will be interesting to your Lordship. The Cortes met, agreeably to the summons of convocation, in the Isle of Leon, on the 24th inst, and having taken the usual oaths, administered to them in an adjoining church by the Bishop of Orense, President of the Regency, they repaired in a Body to the _Theatre_ which had been fitted up for their reception, as the most convenient for _them_ and the best adapted for the accommodation of the _public_ of any place that could be selected in the Island. They were accompanied by a great concourse of people of all ranks, shouting, ‘Viva España, viva la nacion, y vivan los Padres de la Patria.’ After they were installed, the Regency who had accompanied them gave an account of their administration and made a formal demission of their authority in the hands of the Cortes, and then withdrew. I was not present during the whole of the sitting, which continued till 5 _o’clock_ in the morning, but the following is, I believe, a pretty correct account of the most important Decrees which were passed, some of which you will allow to be of _great importance indeed_, viz.:-- The _sovereignty_ of the nation, now assembled in Cortes. The legislative power vested in them. The inviolability of the persons of the deputies. All the cessions made in Bayonne declared to be null and void, not only on account of the violence employed in obtaining them, but _chiefly_ for having been made without the consent and contrary to the will of the Spanish nation so strongly pronounced. Ferdinand VII. declared to be King of Spain and the Indies. (The motion was, King and _Sovereign_, but the word _Sovereign_ was rejected.) The late Regency, for the present (_interinamente_) to exercise the executive power; they and the Ministers to be responsible to the Cortes for their conduct in the administration of public affairs and to grant no offices which were not absolutely and indispensably necessary in the actual circumstances of the nation. The Regency to take the usual oaths to the Cortes (which they did on the same evening). The Regency not to remove more than one league from the place where the Cortes shall be sitting.