All officers, civil, military, and judiciary, confirmed in their appointments. The judiciary to confine themselves _strictly_ to their _judicial_ capacities. Everything was conducted with a greater degree of decorum than could have been expected, all circumstances considered. Your Lordship will be of opinion that it was a spectacle highly interesting to see a body of men thus suddenly assembled and unaccustomed to public business, discussing objects of the greatest magnitude with calmness and dignity and with as much confidence that they were laying the foundations of the independence, liberty, and happiness of their country as if there was not a Frenchman on this side of the Pyrenees, tho’ they were then deliberating with a French army in sight and almost within reach of their batteries. I have the strongest hopes that the meeting of the Cortes will produce the most favourable effects. It cannot fail to rouse every dormant energy of the nation; _here_ the enthusiasm is universal, and I am not afraid of its running into any of those horrible excesses which disgraced the French Revolution. The elections have fallen upon persons distinguished for talents, probity, and patriotism; this I know to be the case with respect to those deputies which have been chosen here, and I have reason to believe that it is _generally_ so. There is but one Grandee in the Cortes--Villafranca--who was chosen by the _Ayuntamiento_ of Murcia. Infantado would have been chosen by the Emigrants from Madrid here. He had the greatest number of suffrages; but being only one of three, who were balloted for agreeably to the mode of election prescribed by the enclosed paper, the lot fell upon a _Relator_ of the Council of Castile, a very able and upright lawyer. A commission, or rather committee, was appointed yesterday to draw up a plan of the forms by which their future proceedings were to be regulated. We expect that a decree will be passed in a few days establishing the liberty of the press; the plan of it, I have reason to think, is now preparing. We expect likewise that a journal of the proceedings and debates of the Cortes will be published daily, and this, I hope, will be circulated, in thousands, all over the country occupied by the enemy, by means of the _guerrillas_ which are every day increasing in number, force, and audacity. I saw yesterday a respectable person who was in Madrid when the _Empecinado_ attacked the _Casa de campo_, and when Joseph and his suite fled in confusion and dismay from the playhouse. Very few of the French cabinet couriers escape the vigilance and boldness of the _guerrillas_. Another intercepted mail has just arrived here containing correspondence of a very interesting nature; it will be soon published.