_Chelsea, June 1st, 1825._
PREFACE
TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
Some of the following Letters have been printed in the New Monthly
Magazine.
The Author would, indeed, be inclined to commit the whole collection
to the candour of his readers without a prefatory address, were it
not that the plan of his Work absolutely requires some explanation.
The slight mixture of fiction which these Letters contain, might
raise a doubt whether the sketches of Spanish manners, customs, and
opinions, by means of which the Author has endeavoured to pourtray
the moral state of his country at a period immediately preceding, and
in part coincident with the French invasion, may not be exaggerated
by fancy, and coloured with a view to mere effect.
It is chiefly on this account that the Author deems it necessary to
assure the Public of the reality of every circumstance mentioned in
his book, except the name of _Leucadio Doblado_. These Letters are in
effect the faithful memoirs of a real Spanish clergyman, as far as
his character and the events of his life can illustrate the state of
the country which gave him birth.
_Doblado’s_ Letters are dated from Spain, and, to preserve
consistency, the Author is supposed to have returned thither after
a residence of some years in England. This is another fictitious
circumstance. Since the moment when the person disguised under the
above name left that beloved country, whose religious intolerance has
embittered his life--that country which, boasting, at this moment,
of a _free_ constitution, still continues to deprive her children of
the right to worship God according to their own conscience--he has
not for a day quitted England, the land of his ancestors, and now the
country of his choice and adoption.
It is not, however, from pique or resentment that the Author has
dwelt so long and so warmly upon the painful and disgusting picture
of Spanish bigotry. Spain, “with all her faults,” is still and shall
ever be the object of his love. But since no man, within the limits
of her territory, can venture to lay open the canker which, fostered
by religion, feeds on the root of her political improvements; be
it allowed a self-banished Spaniard to describe the sources of
such a strange anomaly in the New Constitution of Spain, and thus
to explain to such as may not be unacquainted with his name as a
Spanish writer, the true cause of an absence which might otherwise be
construed into a dereliction of duty, and a desertion of that post
which both nature and affection marked so decidedly for the exertion
of his humble talents.
_Chelsea, June 1822._