DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47347#0071
THE SP/VNISH SUCCESSION.
55
law of succession to the throne. These Cortes were not
even of the required number; the deputies of no more than
twenty-seven towns could be collected at Madrid; of course
nearly one third of the proper number was wanting1. The
auto acordado was submitted to them not as a royal proposi-
tion, not as a projected law which they were to discuss, but
as a law ready made, motu proprio, and solely in order that
it might be promulgated.
This act of royal power was then unexampled in the his-
tory of Spain: no king had insulted the Cortes so grossly
as to require them to publish laws which they had neither
discussed nor approved. It would have been a less extra-
ordinary proceeding, if Philip V. had given this law to the
nation as an act of his royal will, without requiring the
Cortes to intervene in any way. In his auto acordado, that
prince expressly commanded the annulling and making void
of whatever was contrary to it, laws, statutes, customs,
edicts, ordinances, &c., and especially the laws of las Siete
Partidas—laws which had been established with all the
forms and according to all the rules of law, during the
reigns of his predecessors, to whose inheritance he had suc-
ceeded by virtue of those very laws—laws, venerable and
justly honoured for their antiquity and their constant appli-
cation—laws, finally, which had called to the throne the
same king Philip, and which a few years before he had
sworn to maintain on receiving the homage of the nation.
Whatever, then, might be the political motives, which,
according to his view, imperatively called for such a change,
the king never could have a right to overthrow these laws,
which comprised the principle of his personal sovereignty,
to which he had himself given weight, and which his oath
1 Historial Essay on the right of succession to the crown of Spain, by the Mar-
quis de Miraflores, count de Villapaterna, published in 1833 at Madrid in
Spanish, and in 1839, in French, at Paris, p. 12.
55
law of succession to the throne. These Cortes were not
even of the required number; the deputies of no more than
twenty-seven towns could be collected at Madrid; of course
nearly one third of the proper number was wanting1. The
auto acordado was submitted to them not as a royal proposi-
tion, not as a projected law which they were to discuss, but
as a law ready made, motu proprio, and solely in order that
it might be promulgated.
This act of royal power was then unexampled in the his-
tory of Spain: no king had insulted the Cortes so grossly
as to require them to publish laws which they had neither
discussed nor approved. It would have been a less extra-
ordinary proceeding, if Philip V. had given this law to the
nation as an act of his royal will, without requiring the
Cortes to intervene in any way. In his auto acordado, that
prince expressly commanded the annulling and making void
of whatever was contrary to it, laws, statutes, customs,
edicts, ordinances, &c., and especially the laws of las Siete
Partidas—laws which had been established with all the
forms and according to all the rules of law, during the
reigns of his predecessors, to whose inheritance he had suc-
ceeded by virtue of those very laws—laws, venerable and
justly honoured for their antiquity and their constant appli-
cation—laws, finally, which had called to the throne the
same king Philip, and which a few years before he had
sworn to maintain on receiving the homage of the nation.
Whatever, then, might be the political motives, which,
according to his view, imperatively called for such a change,
the king never could have a right to overthrow these laws,
which comprised the principle of his personal sovereignty,
to which he had himself given weight, and which his oath
1 Historial Essay on the right of succession to the crown of Spain, by the Mar-
quis de Miraflores, count de Villapaterna, published in 1833 at Madrid in
Spanish, and in 1839, in French, at Paris, p. 12.