lord of all the earth. Well, having no more reason to concede him this property in America than in Europe, Asia, and Africa, if his dominion is admitted in the first, it cannot be denied in the others. And what would be the result of such a doctrine, as absurd as it is monstrous? That the sacred right of property would be revoked; that nothing could be fixed or stable on this point, and that all the peoples and nations would exist at the discretion of a man who, with no other reason than his sovereignty and absolute will, could, as can any proprietor, dispossess them from the land they occupy; that is to say, he could exhaust the wellspring of wealth and dry up the fountains of public happiness. And would the wise and liberal legislators of the Peninsula let these antisocial doctrines stand? In no way; in the century of the Enlightenment and Spanish liberty, none of its sons thinks so absurdly and mistakenly.
The cession of Moctezuma is just like that of Fernando VII: It was snatched by force; it was declared null by the peoples of the empire, who took up arms to resist the usurpations of the invading army, which, like the French in Spain, tried to legitimate by violence a renunciation as unlawful
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as that of Bayonne. The Spanish censured this, and they cannot endorse something that is entirely similar to it.
The right of conquest is the right of the strongest, which can be and in fact has been suppressed by another, equal right.
The proclamation of the Gospel cannot be a legitimate entitlement for taking possession of the land of catechized peoples. Otherwise, the apostles in the first centuries of the church and the missionaries in the following centuries would be legitimate owners of the land of the converted faithful, and the sacerdotal monarchy, so justly censured in the catechists of Paraguay, could be realized.
The establishment, protection, and development of the colonies have always been the work of individuals, and the Spanish government has played no part in this except to impede by its prohibitive laws and exclusive commerce the progress of agriculture, violating nature in a land capable of producing everything and causing the misery and discouragement of its inhabitants. These inhabitants, because they were prohibited from freely exporting their surplus fruits and importing articles of luxury and comfort, did not make this most fertile land produce anything but what was necessary to sustain a paltry commerce or, better stated, monopoly, incapable of creating great wealth and therefore suitable only for holding back the progress of this nascent colony. And will it be possible that what has caused the unhappiness of Mexico be precisely what is alleged as a right to continue oppressing it? What person, who is not ignorant of the principles of natural equity, will be able to approve such tyrannical behavior? The facts expressed are constant, the consequences are legitimate. What argument, then, can stand up to so palpable a proof? Will it perhaps be the investment of wealth in the establishment and defense of the colony? But here one must note two things: first, that Mexico, although oppressed, has produced enough to cover its expenses, always deducting a surplus that, until the beginning of the insurrection, never has been less than five million duros, which Spain has arranged to its favor and, for this very reason, cannot be certain it has suffered any misappropriation of funds, inasmuch as it was utilized in the establishment of the colonies. The second is that this defense, purely imaginary, has been more harmful and noxious than useful and beneficial to the Mexican territory, whose ports and cities have suffered the horrors of an invasion and the violence of a sacking for no other reason than its dependence on the Peninsula, dependence contrary to the intent
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of nature, which did not create an entire world to subject it to following the fate of a small piece of Europe, the least extensive part of our antipodean hemisphere.
It remains for us only to make this illusion of a loyalty oath disappear, an oath that has been used so much to frighten the timid consciences and bewilder the minds of ignorant men. This oath is compulsory and necessarily conditional, that is to say, the people are obliged to obey the decisions of the government so long as they are beneficial to the community and fulfill their promise. If either of these two things is absent, the government’s right to command and the peoples’ obligation to obey terminate, and the social contract is dissolved. Every act emanating from a government that cannot or will not provide for the happiness of the people that has put its trust in it is null, unlawful, of no value, and, for this very reason, unworthy of being obeyed, and this is precisely the situation in which the Americas find themselves with respect to the Spanish government. Open the Constitution of the Spanish monarchy, and the slightest and most superficial examination will be enough to make clear the commitment of its authors to diminish American representation and obstruct the influence that the native born of those countries could and should have in the government established on the Peninsula. At each step, one comes across articles that confirm this truth, and this code, justly admired for the good judgment, common sense, and wisdom of all its measures in what pertains to Spain, does not lack for injustices, inconsistencies, and puerilities in what concerns America. But let us grant that the constitutional charter contains nothing contrary to the interests of America, that all and each one of the articles sanctioned in it are manifestly beneficial, and, if you wish, that they alone are capable of providing their happiness. It seems that no more can be conceded. Nonetheless, Spain’s cause has not been improved by this. And why? Because despite the continuous and energetic demands that have been made to enforce their observance, nothing has been accomplished; our efforts have been useless, merit has been forgotten, virtue has been beaten down, incompetence positioned in high posts, and the outcries of a people reduced to misery disregarded. Well, now, either the Spanish government has tried to deceive us, observing a conduct entirely contrary to what is provided for in the text of the laws, or it has not had energy sufficient to see that they are observed. In either case we are absolved of the oath of loyalty because in neither have the conditions
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been fulfilled under which this oath was offered, conditions that are the bond of union between the people and the government, essentially embedded in the nature of these contracts and the fundamental principle of every social contract.
Given that neither Spain nor any other power has a right to the land we occupy, we must make clear that this right resides in the general body of the Mexican people; that is to say, in the individuals born and lawfully domiciled in the empire.
The right of the peoples to possess the land they occupy must necessarily originate in one of these three principles: origin, birth, or residence, because the donation or purchase, if it is of occupied land, can be made legal only by the will of the proprietors, and if the land is unoccupied, no right whatsoever authorizes the donor or seller to transmit to the purchaser or recipient a right it does not have.
A generally accepted truth is that the legitimate possessor of unencumbered assets can transfer the dominion he enjoys to his sons and constitute them lawful masters of the paternal inheritance, and this is what we understand by right of origin or filiation. In the same way, every individual human being has the right to live in the country where he was born and, if he submits to the laws established by the appropriate authority, to enjoy the comforts that the society occupying the land offers; and this is what we know as right of birth. Finally, every foreigner settled in a society, with the expressed or tacit consent of the individuals who constitute that society, can acquire property, enter into the enjoyment of all the comforts the citizens of the state enjoy, and acquire a right we call residency. Because the right of society to the land it occupies is not nor can be anything more than the sum of the individual rights, one unquestionable conclusion follows by deduction: that the citizens of the state, which consists of all of them together being its lawful proprietors, must have a true dominion over the occupied land. Well, now, the citizens who make up the Mexican Empire fall into three classes: the descendants of the old inhabitants, the children of foreign origin in the country, and the Spaniards and other foreigners all living together there. Each one of them is the lawful proprietor of a part of the land, and this the Spanish government has never questioned. So the empire, which represents the
