checks that the Insurgents have received, and many of the principal criminals of this faction have been discovered: I should have already purged the country of the most dangerous of these traitors,—and, by so doing, deranged the schemes of the disaffected,—intimidated secret enemies, and strengthened the hands of the Government, if I had been able to act with freedom or energy. But the necessity of conforming to the laws which the Constitution had established, in order not too openly to set at defiance the will of the Mother-country, communicated always in the august name of the King our Master, compelled me to trust to the slow, and, under present circumstances, insidious course of a judicial inquiry, confided often to judges but little less criminal than the accused themselves, without deriving from the measure any other fruit than a confirmation of my suspicions, that the Government was undermined, without any possibility of avoiding the explosion.
In such a situation as this, no resource remains but to reanimate the authority of the Government, and to make a last effort to conclude the war, by crushing the rebellion at once. The re-establishment of the old laws will no longer suffice: There was a time when they were sufficient to keep up the ancient illusions of these people with regard to their chiefs and magistrates, and to inspire them with a proper respect, for their measures and decrees: But now,—decried, discredited, and even turned into ridicule, by the new system,—stigmatized as arbitrary and unjust,—attributed to an illegal origin, and held up to the scorn of the crowd,—they have lost their prestige, and even their respectability, and are no longer capable of reducing a people which has thrown off the yoke, or of communicating to them an impulse sufficiently powerful to compel them to return within the bounds of duty. When once this is effected, they may be governed again by the old Code, or by any other that his Majesty may think fit to adopt for his dominions of Ultramar.
But, at present, I see no other remedy for countries actually a prey to rebellion, than the establishment of martial law, until such time as the extermination of the disaffected, and
