people might become accustomed to the idea of death. I have stirred up
trouble so that to escape from it some remedy might be found; I have
placed obstacles in the way of trade so that the country, impoverished
and reduced to misery, might no longer be afraid of anything; I have
excited desires to plunder the treasury, and as this has not been
enough to bring about a popular uprising, I have wounded the people
in their most sensitive fiber; I have made the vulture itself insult
the very corpse that it feeds upon and hasten the corruption.

"Now, when I was about to get the supreme rottenness, the supreme
filth, the mixture of such foul products brewing poison, when the
greed was beginning to irritate, in its folly hastening to seize
whatever came to hand, like an old woman caught in a conflagration,
here you come with your cries of Hispanism, with chants of confidence
in the government, in what cannot come to pass, here you have a body
palpitating with heat and life, young, pure, vigorous, throbbing with
blood, with enthusiasm, suddenly come forth to offer itself again as
fresh food!

"Ah, youth is ever inexperienced and dreamy, always running after
the butterflies and flowers! You have united, so that by your efforts
you may bind your fatherland to Spain with garlands of roses when in
reality you are forging upon it chains harder than the diamond! You
ask for equal rights, the Hispanization of your customs, and you don't
see that what you are begging for is suicide, the destruction of your
nationality, the annihilation of your fatherland, the consecration of
tyranny! What will you be in the future? A people without character,
a nation without liberty--everything you have will be borrowed, even
your very defects! You beg for Hispanization, and do not pale with
shame when they deny it you! And even if they should grant it to you,