I have heretofore styled it a blessing that the Spanish People became their own masters at once.  It was a blessing; but not without much alloy:  as the same disinterested generous passions, which preserved (and would for a season still have preserved) them from a bad exercise of their power, impelled them to part with it too soon; before labours, hitherto neither tried nor thought of, had created throughout the country the minor excellences indispensible for the performance of those labours; before powerful minds, not hitherto of general note, had found time to shew themselves; and before men, who were previously known, had undergone the proof of new situations.  Much therefore was wanting to direct the general judgement in the choice of persons, when the second delegation took place; which was a removal (the first, we have seen, had not been so) of the power from the People.  But, when a common centre became absolutely necessary, the power ought to have passed from the provincial Assemblies into the hands of the Cortes; and into none else.  A pernicious Oligarchy crept into the place of this comprehensive—­this constitutional—­this saving and majestic Assembly.  Far be it from me to speak of the Supreme Junta with ill-advised condemnation:  every man must feel for the distressful trials to which that Body has been exposed.  But eighty men or a hundred, with a king at their head veiled under a cloud of fiction (we might say, with reference to the difficulties of this moment, begotten upon a cloud of fiction), could not be an image of a Nation like that of Spain, or an adequate instrument of their power for their ends.  The Assembly, from the smallness of its numbers, must have wanted breadth of wing to extend itself and brood over Spain with a quickening touch of warmth every where.  If also, as hath been mentioned, there was a want of experience to determine the judgment in choice of persons; this same smallness of numbers must have unnecessarily increased the evil—­by excluding many men of worth and talents which were so far known and allowed as that they would surely have been deputed to an Assembly upon a larger scale.  Gratitude, habit, and numerous other causes must have given an undue preponderance to birth, station, rank, and fortune; and have fixed the election, more than was reasonable, upon those who were most conspicuous for these distinctions;—­men whose very virtue would incline them superstitiously to respect established things, and to mistrust the People—­towards whom not only a frank confidence but a forward generosity was the first of duties.  I speak not of the vices to which such men would be liable, brought up under the discipline of a government administered like the old Monarchy of Spain:  the matter is both ungracious and too obvious.