all of them, is the owner and absolute master of the territory they possess.
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2. But if the Mexican people, or what is the same, the people who make up Mexico, are the lawful masters of the land they occupy, it is no less certain that they are sufficiently enlightened to know their rights and the great benefits independence carries with it, and if there were no other evidence of this truth than the many and great sacrifices they made to achieve independence, these alone would make it clear in a conclusive and decisive way. Eleven years of espionage, prisons, scaffolds, and uninterrupted defeats demonstrate the difficulty of the endeavor and the perseverance of the Mexican people, which has known how to sacrifice its most precious interests in order to achieve liberty. And this immutable steadfastness, this invincible perseverance in confronting such powerful obstacles, are they not proofs guaranteeing that there exists in the general body of the nation an intimate conviction that everything must be sacrificed to the interests of liberty? Has their conduct not demonstrated that they prefer death to servitude and that they are firmly resolved to die free rather than live as slaves? But if, despite all this, even their enlightenment is doubted, peruse their writings published since the year 1810 in England, France, Spain, North America, in Mexico in the presence of masters, and not only will one find many documents that would do honor to some nations that pass for enlightened, but also a total and absolute uniformity with respect to the principal point; that is to say, each one cooperating, by the means in his grasp, in the great work of emancipating the Mexican Empire.
Take in your hands this precious code sanctioned amidst the noise and clamor of arms in the town of Apatzingán. Examine it impartially and you will find inscribed in it all the principles characteristic of the liberal system: sovereignty of the people, the division of powers, the appropriate jurisdiction of each of them, liberty of the press, mutual obligations between the people and the government, the rights of free man, and the means of defense that must be provided to the criminal. In a word, you will find, delimited with sufficient precision and accuracy, the limits of each established authority and, perfectly combined, the liberty of the citizen and the supreme power of the society. So we do not hesitate to affirm resolutely that this code, with some slight adjustments, would have produced our independence and liberty from the year 1815 if the insidious maneuvers of the Spanish government, calculated to divide us, had not produced the pernicious consequence of separating from
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the common interests a portion of citizens who, although very small compared with the rest, was the most necessary because it had taken up arms.
But the happy day arrived when the dawning light of citizenship broke throughout the land of Moctezuma, and the activity of this light penetrated the body of the Mexican army. The memorable twenty-fourth of February arrived, and the fields of Iguala repeated the echoes of the liberty pronounced by the immortal Iturbide. At that voice, the chains that bound our hemisphere and another were broken, and, free of them, we put into place, in the country of Anáhuac, a throne to the liberty that had been exiled from it for three centuries. This voice resounds in the provinces and spreads with the speed of light into all corners of the empire. The hero Negrete, as moderate in discussions as fearless on the battlefield, dispels the force of the tyrants with his presence alone and, at the head of his army, frees half the empire in two months. These generals, aided by the meritorious leaders Guerrero, Andrade, Bustamante, Echávarri, Herrera, Bravo, Barragán, Quintanar, Filisola, Santana, and others, make the Spanish domination disappear from this soil in the short space of six months, giving a new appearance to revolution, purging it of some stains contracted in the earlier era and, through moderation and concord, making it appear assured. How is it, then, that some men who have made the most deadly and destructive war against each other come together cordially to effect the liberty and independence of their country? How has it been possible that the voice of two generals in the short space of a few months united wills so discordant through a long eleven years that they would even wage a devastating war? This admirable phenomenon is the inevitable result of the rapid diffusion of the light, originating in the enlightenment that has made known to the people their true interests.
And for a people who knew how to gain their independence, destroying a formidable enemy that they harbored in their breast, will it be impossible to repel a foreign force? A people to whom the rights of liberty are so familiar and who have a more than sufficient knowledge of the eternal maxims of justice, will they be oppressed by an internal despotism? In no way. This outcome is contrary to the experience of all the centuries and does not cohere with natural reason. It is certain that the enemies of independence and liberty will make every effort, first, to compel us to enter the Spanish dominion and, second, to impede or
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make illusory the reforms consequent to the liberal system. But each of these until this day has a small following and, with passing time, no following, as is to be hoped from the liberty of the press and the enlightenment that characterizes the meritorious leaders who have led us to liberty.
3. To conclude this discourse, it remains only to make clear that to sustain the proclaimed independence, the physical force we have is sufficient. This physical force has as its base the population and the means of sustaining that population. With the population numerous and the state rich, there is everything necessary to raise an armed force capable of checking foreign invasions, especially when this armed force is inured to war by having been on campaign a considerable time.
Our population is much superior to that of various independent states of Europe and is indisputably double what the United States of America had when it pronounced itself independent, a force that made the British nation tremble and frustrated entirely all the plans of subjugation that Britain had with respect to its American colonies. This nation, whose maritime force is the greatest and most formidable the world has known, could not subject three million unarmed countrymen lacking in military knowledge and in a land that, as the least fertile of the entire continent, could not provide anything but the scarcest resources. And will Spain be able, threatened by foreign armies, shaken by internal upheavals, and with a navy in the most deplorable state, to reduce to its dominion the Mexican Empire, which has a population, according to the lowest estimate, of six million, an army inured to war, ready to sacrifice itself for the liberty of its patria, a fertile terrain, rich and abundant in every type of crop and, for this very reason, capable of raising and sustaining an army ten times greater than whatever the most formidable power of Europe can transport? It would be delirious to say so, and only a foolish man could enter into the ridiculous undertaking of supporting such a paradox.
Nor can the exigencies we have experienced in these days be avoided, for they are the inevitable consequences of the disorder that must emerge at the outset of a government that is starting to establish itself. Drain the water from the mines, establish freedom of trade, develop agriculture, and the state, by means of direct tax, without an excessive burden on individuals and without the espionage and fetters that the individual and system of customs carry with them, will have what is necessary for all
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the expenses of state, to cover its letters of credit and establish a public bank free, if possible, of taxes on individuals “for the extinction of the debt” or, at the least, noticeably diminish such taxes.
From the principles expressed so far and from the application that we have made of them to the Mexican Empire, one can deduce: that it is the legitimate owner of the land it has and currently occupies; that it has in its favor and in support of its sovereign decrees the requisite enlightenment, the necessary population—that is to say, the physical and moral power—to sustain them; that, for that very reason, it is and must be considered and recognized as a true nation; and that, by reason of such, it has an unquestionable right to alter, modify, and abolish totally the established forms of government, substituting for them those it judges suitable for achieving the ultimate goal of society, which is not nor can be anything other than the
