ers of the above-mentioned departments, and to prevent the latter from being troubled on account of editions of the aforesaid works which they may have published anterior to the ruinous disputes between them : Upon the report of our minister of the interior, our council of state agreeing, we have decreed and do decree as follows: Art 1. Editions printed anterior to the 1st January 1811, in the departments of the 22d, 29th, and 30th military divisions, of works printed in France ulterior to the same epoch, and constituting a part of private literary property, shall not be considered as counterfeit, provided they are stamped before the 1st of January next. 2. Consequently editors, printers, and all booksellers or others in any way trading in books in the above designated departments, who may be proprietors or in possession of any of them, are bound to declare to the prefect of their department the number of copies they possess of the said editions. The prefects will transmit a copy' of these declarations to our directorgeneral for bookselling. 3. These copies must be presented in each department, and by each printer or bookselier, prior to the 1st of October, to the commissioner delegated for the purpose, and the first page in each of them carefully stamped; after which they may be freely sold throughout the empire. 4. The booksellers shall be bound to pay the authors or proprietors the twelfth part of the whole of the copies declared by them to be in their warehouses, or at their disposal, and that too every six months, in proportion to the sales they make, which shall be determin ed by the number of copies that remain of those they produce. 5. On the 1st of October, the stamps shall be sent back to cur director-general for bookselling; after which time all copies of the above-mentioned editions that shall be found without a stamp will be considered spurious, and those upon whom they are found subject to the punishments settled by the laws and our regulations. 6. Our grand judge, minister of justice, and our minister for the interior, are charged, each in as much as concerns him, with the execution of the present decree, which shall be inserted in our bul. letin of laws. (Signed) NAPOLEON. Milan, Aug. 25. To-day being the nativity of her majesty the empress and queen, there was a court and spectacle at the palace. The royal institute, in the sitting of the 6th of May last, voted an address to his majesty the emperor of France, containing sentiments of regard for his royal person. His majesty the emperor and king was most graciously pleased to receive it, and remitted the following letter to the Italian insti tute: Count Perades, president of the institute, after having recalled Italy to the glory of arms, my care has been to recall it to the ancient honour of the sciences and arts. For this end I have given my kingdom of Italy that form which to me appeared most conducible to the progress of Italian literature. The sentiments which the Italian institute have expressed for me are guarantees of its zeal to second my intentions. The present having no other end, I pray, M. President, God may have superintend the application of the you in his holy keeping. NEW SPANISH CONSTITUTION. The cortes having appointed a committee of their body to form the plan of a constitution, the following are said to be the preliminary and fundamental principles of the plan which the committee have proposed. The two sections, consisting of 242 articles, were read in the public sitting of the 19th Aug. Preliminary and fundamental principles. Spain belongs to the Spanish people, and is not the patrimony of any family. The nation only can make fundamental laws. The Roman catholic and apostolic religion, unmixed with any other, is the only religion which the nation professes or will profess. The government of Spain is an hereditary monarchy. The cortes shall make the laws, and the king shall execute them. Spanish citizens.-The children of Spaniards, and of foreigners married to Spanish women, or who bring a capital in order to natura. lize themselves to the soil, or establish themselves in trade, or who teach any useful art, are citizens of Spain. None but citizens can fill municipal ofiices.-The rights of citizenship may be lost by long absence from the country, or by condemnation to corporeal or infamous punishments. The king. The person of the king is inviolable and sacred. He shall sanction the laws enacted by the cortes. He may declare war and make peace. He shall appoint to civil and military employments on the proposal of the council of state. He shall direct all diplomatic negotiations. He shall public revenue, &c. obstruct Restrictions on the kingly authority. -The king shall not the meeting of the cortes in the cases and at the periods pointed out by the constitution, nor embarrass or suspend the sittings, &c. All who may advise him to any such proceedings shall be holden and dealt with as traitors. He must not travel, marry, alienate any ting, abdicate the crown, raise taxes, nor exchange any town, city, &c. without having first obtained permission of the cortes. Don Ferdinando VII. is declared by the cortes king of Spain, and after his decease his legitimate descendants shall succeed to the throne. The king shall be a minor until he has completed the age of 18 years. The eldest son of the king shall be called prince of the Asturias, and, as such, shall at the age of 14 take an oath before the cortes to maintain the constitution, and to be faithful to the king. During a minority a regency shall be formed, which shall superintend the education of the young prince according to the orders of the cortes. The regency shall be presided by the queen mother, if she be in life, and shall be composed of two of the oldest deputies of the cortes, who shall be replaced from year to year, and of two counsellors of the council of state chosen in the order of their seniority. The cortes shall fix the salary proper for the support of the king and his family, and shall point out the places des tined for his recreation, &c. The infantes may be appointed to all employments, but cannot be magistrates, nor members of the cortes, and must not leave the king. dom without the permission of the said cortes. There shall be eight secretaries of state, including two for South and North America; they shall be responsible for the affairs of their respective departments, and the remuneration which they shall receive shall be determined by the cortes. A council of state shall be formed, consisting of 40 members: four of this number are to be grandees of Spain of acknowledged merit and virtue; four ecclesiastics, of which two shall be bishops; twelve Americans; the remaining twenty members to be chosen from among the most respectable citizens of the other classes of the community. This council shall meet every year on the first of March, and shall sit during three months. This period can only be extended on the request of the king, or for some reason of great urgency. In such cases the session may be prolonged, but not beyond one month. The cortes.-The election of the cortes shall take place conformably to the mode prescribed by the constitution, and one deputy shall be chosen for each 70,000 souls. The sittings of the cortes shall be opened by the king, or in his name, by the president of the deputation of the cortes, which ought to remain permanent, in order to watch over the fulfilment of the constitution. HIS MAJESTY'S HEALTH. The queen's third quarterly council, consisting of the arch bishops of Canterbury and York, the lord chancellor, the duke of Montrose, earls Winchilsea and Aylesford, and lord Ellenborough, assembled at Windsor Castle on Saturday, October the 5th, conformably to the regency act, before which his majesty's physicians underwent a long examination. The lord chancellor afterwards waited upon the prince regent, and laid before his royal highness the minutes of the proceedings. Report of the queen's council, held at Windsor, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1811.1 That the state of his majesty's health, at the time of this meeting, is not such as to enable his majesty to resume the personal exercise of his royal authority; that his ma jesty's bodily health does not appear to be much altered since the date of our last report; but that his majesty's mental health does appear to be considerably worse than it was at the time of our last report. From all the circumstances of the case, his majesty's recovery is represented as very improbable by all the physicians in attendance upon his majesty, excepting one, who still thinks it probable; but, at the same time, looking to his majesty's faculties, the remaining vigour of his constitution and bodily health, a few of the medical persons in attendance represent that they do not despair, and the majority of the physicians that they do not entirely despair of his majesty's recovery. doth now solemnly declare, in the presence of the universe, these rights inalienable; to the end that every citizen may at all times compare the acts of the government with the purposes of the social institutions; that the magistrate may never lose sight of the rules by which his conduct must be regulated; and that the legislator may in no case mistake the objects of the trust committed to him. Sovereignty of the people. 1. The sovereignty resides in the people, and the exercise of it in the citizens, by the medium of the right of suffrage, and through the agency of their representatives legally constituted. 2. Sovereignty is by its essence and nature imprescriptible, inalienable, and indivisible. 3. A portion only of the citizens, even with the right of suffrage, cannot exercise the sovereignty; every individual ought to participate by his vote in the formation of the body which is to represent the Sovereign authority; because all have a right to express their will with full and entire liberty. This principle alone can render the constitution of their government legitimate and just. 4. Any individual, corporate body, or city, which attempts to usurp the sovereignty, incurs the crime of treason against the people. 5. The public functionaries shall hold their offices for a definite period of time, and the investiture with a public function shall not at tach any other importance or influence than what they acquire in the opinion of their fellow-citizens, by the virtues they may exercise whilst occupied in the service of the republic. 6. Crimes committed by the representatives and agents of the re public shall not be passed over with impunity; because no individual has a right to become more inviolable than another. 7. The law shall be equal for all, to punish crimes, and to reward virtues, without distinction of birth or hereditary pretensions. Rights of man in society. 1. The purpose of society is the common happiness of the people, and government is instituted to secure it. 2. The felicity of the people consists in the enjoyment of liberty, security, property, and equality of rights, in the presence of the law. 3. The law is formed by the free and solemn expression ofthe general will, declared by agents whom the people elect to represent their will. 4. The right to declare their thoughts and opinions, through the medium of the press, is unrestrained and free, under responsibility to the law for any violation of the public tranquillity, the religious opinions, property and honour of the citizen, 5. The object of the law is to regulate the manner in which the citizens ought to act upon occasions, when reason requires that they should conduct themeselves not merely by their individual judgement and will, but by a common rule. 6. When a citizen submits his actions to a law which his judgement does not approve, he does not surrender his right nor his reason, but obeys the law because he should not be influenced by his own private judgement against the general will to which he ought to conform. Thus the law does not exact the sacrifice of reason, nor the liberty of those who do not approve it, because it never makes an attempt upon liberty, unless where where the latter violates social order, or swerves from those principles which determine that all shall be governed by one common rule or law. 7. Every citizen cannot hold an equal power in the formation of the law, because all do not equally contribute to the preservation of the state, to the security and tranquillity of society. 8. The citizens shall be ranged in two classes; the one with the right of suffrage, the other without it. 9. Those possessing the right of. suffrage are such as are establishe in the territory of Venezuela, of whatever nation they may be, and they alone constitute sovereignty. 10. Those not entitled to the right of suffrage are such as have no certain place of residence; those without property, which is the support of society. This class, nevertheless, enjoys the benefits of the law, and its protection, in as full a measure as the other, but without participating in the right of suffrage. 11. No individual can be accused, arrested, or confined, unless in cases explicitly pointed out by law. 12. Every act exercised against a citizen, without the formalities of the law, is arbitrary and tyrannical. 13. Any magistrate who decrees or causes an arbitrary act to be executed, shall be punished with the severity the law prescribes. 14. The law shall protect public and individual liberty against oppression and tyranny. 15. Every citizen is to be regarded as innocent, until he shall have been proved culpable. If it become necessary to secure his person, unnecessary rigour for the purpose shall be repressed by law. 16. No person shall be sentenced or punished without a legal trial, in virtue of a law promulgated previously to the offence. Any law which punishes crimes committed previous to its existence, is tyrannical. A retroactive effect assumed by the law is a crime. 17. The law shall not decree any punishment not absolutely necessary, and that shall be proportionate to the crime, and useful to society. 18. Security consists in the protection afforded by society to each of its members, for the preservation of his person, his rights, aud his property. 19. Every individual possesses the right to acquire property, and to dispose of it at will, unless his will be contrary to a previous compact, or to law. 20. No kind of labour, art, industry, or commerce, shall be prohibited to any citizen, save only such establishments as may be required for the subsistence of the state. 21. No one can be deprived of the least portion of his property without his consent, except when the public necessity requires it, and then under the condition of a just compensation. No contribution can be required and established, unless for the general utility. Every citizen entitled to suffrage, has the right, through the medium of his representatives, to advise and consult on the establishment of contributions, to watch over their application, and to require an account of the same from those he has elected as his representatives. 22. The liberty of claiming one's rights, in the presence of the depo- . sitories of the public authority, in no case can be withheld, nor confined to any particular citizen. (04) 23 There |
