Liberty in Mexico. Группа авторов
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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 universal 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