admired by the nations of Europe for the great services they have rendered the cause of liberty; those wise men who have laid out the road and smoothed the path that leads to independence; those patriots, we repeat, are the ones who must be accused of inconsistency, because loving the cause, they detest and abominate the result; because establishing a principle, they reject its consequences; finally, because proclaiming liberty in their country with the greatest firmness, they sustain the slavery of Mexico with the same tenacity.
Indeed, without looking beyond the Spanish Constitution and without outside assistance from the works of the most celebrated writers on public law, the Constitution itself supplies us with enough to justify the independence of our empire. The Constitution firmly establishes, as an indisputable principle and as base of the entire constitutional system, the essential inalienable sovereignty of the nation, and the laws of that code proclaim and recognize this doctrine in the most legitimate way. Through those laws comes recognition of the incontestable right that all peoples have to establish the government most suitable to them, alter it, modify it, and abolish it completely when their happiness requires it. Through the Constitution, finally, comes the recognition that in the people of the nation lies the authority to dictate the fundamental laws that ought to rule the nation, to create magistrates that apply those laws to particular cases, settling the disputes that can originate in the opposing nature of interests and organizing a public force that makes effective the observance of the laws and the enforcement of judicial sentences. The consolidation of all these powers results in that supreme authority that exists in societies and that we know by the name of sovereignty. If, then, sovereignty, in those stated terms, is an essential and inherent power of all societies, how can it be denied to this totality of individuals that make up what we call the Mexican Empire? If the legislators of the Peninsula wish to act according to their principles, they will have to do one of two things: either acknowledge the right that helped
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us to effect independence, or deny that we have the capacity to create a strong government that can sustain that independence against external invasions, to enter into political and trade relations with external powers, and to combine those individual interests with the public interest in such a way that internal upheavals, the germ and origin of civil war and anarchy, are avoided. In a word, they will have to deny that our people can and should be understood in the sense that one ascribes to this word “society.”
To proceed, then, with accuracy on such an important subject and to finish off the disputes between the Spanish and Mexican people from their origin at one stroke, we will attempt to put the question in its true perspective.
The independence proclaimed in Mexico can be considered either illegal for lack of authority in the society to alter its government or untimely because the individuals who make up this empire cannot yet be counted among the company of societies inasmuch as they do not possess the totality of conditions necessary to constitute a people. The first is notoriously opposed to the principles sanctioned in the Spanish Constitution, of which we have made mention, and contrary to the rights of all humankind, which the author of the universe did not create to be a patrimony of one or of many men or nations. So, then, the only possibility that remains to the Spaniards is to deny the status of people or nation to the inhabitants of these provinces. To argue persuasively against such an incorrect view, it will be enough to give an exact and precise definition of the ideas corresponding to these words and to apply them to the Mexican Empire in a way so clear and so obvious that no sensible man can deny recognizing in the totality of its individuals a legitimate and formally constituted people.
Those writers on public law who, to their great honor and the benefit of humanity, have supported and clarified the sovereignty of the people, placing the inalienable rights of nations within reach of even the least informed classes, have not taken equal care to determine the conditions essentially necessary to constitute a society. In our judgment, this lack of care is the reason why all the good effects that should be expected from this beneficent principle have not been perceived. Ignorant people, persuaded of their sovereignty but lacking precise ideas that determine in a fixed and exact way the sense of the word “nation,” have believed that
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the entirety of the human species, without other qualities and circumstances, should be considered as “nation”—mistaken concepts that will surely foment discord and disunion and promote civil war!
What is it, then, that we understand by this word “nation,” a “people” or a “society”? And what is the sense that writers on public law have given to the word “nation” when they confirm its sovereignty in those stated terms? It can be nothing other than the free and voluntary coming together of men who can and want, in a legitimately possessed land, to constitute themselves as a state independent from the rest. Nor is it credible that the nations recognized as sovereign and independent can allege rights other than the inherent power to constitute themselves as such and their determined intent to effect it. But which are these necessarily essential conditions under which a nation can constitute itself? Indispensable are: (1) The legitimate possession of the land it occupies. (2) The appropriate enlightenment and resolve to come to know the rights of the free man and to know how to sustain them against despotism’s internal attacks and the external violence of invasion. Finally, a population sufficient to ensure, in a steady and stable way, the subsistence of the state by establishment of an armed force, which both avoids the internal convulsions produced by the discontent of the unruly disorderly elements and contains the hostile designs of ambitious foreign countries. In a word, a legitimately possessed land and the physical and moral force to sustain it are the essential components of any society.
From these luminous principles, whose palpable and manifest evidence must make a strong impression even on the most dubious man, one immediate and legitimate consequence is deduced: that the individuals of this empire are or should be recognized as a true people. They occupy a land whose possession cannot be disputed by any nation in the world; they have made clear to the world by explanations and public declarations that they know the rights of the free man and the justice of the cause they defend; finally, they have succeeded, by taking up arms, in achieving their independence with no assistance other than their own strength, destroying in the brief space of seven months the formidable power of an established government.
It remains for us to put each of these propositions to the test.
1. No nation in the world can dispute with us the land we occupy, because which nation would it be and which the rights that it could allege in support of its claims? Would it be Spain? This seems to be the only
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one, and in effect no other nation seeks it. Let us examine, then, the titles to its dominion, and we will see that they appear to be unlawful. Neither the king, in particular, nor the people of the Spanish nation can revoke the right of property. The time passed when it was accepted as true that the king and some number of citizens were the wealthy proprietors with authority to dispossess the rest, for no other reason than their whim, from the land that the latter had made fruitful for cultivation through their hardships and personal labor. Since the fall of feudalism, every man has a sacred right not to be dispossessed of legally acquired land. How, then, does Spain claim to have rights over a territory that in no way belongs to it, that it gave away entirely in parceling it out among the colonists from whom the current owners descend, and who perhaps never possessed it legitimately?
Indeed, all the rights commonly alleged to justify this illegitimate possession appear unlawful as soon as they are examined. Everything Spain can allege in support of its claims consists in: the donation of Alexander VI; the cession of Moctezuma; the right of conquest; the preaching of the gospel; the establishment, defense, protection, and development of the colony; and, finally, the oath of loyalty.
To hold as legitimate the donation of Alexander, it is necessary to assume the Roman pontiff was the proprietor and
