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4	Discourse on the Means Ambition Uses to Destroy Liberty *

Nothing is more important for a nation that has adopted the republican system, having just emerged from a despotic regime and having won its liberty by the force of arms, than to reduce the real or apparent reasons that might allow a great mass of authority and power to accumulate in the hands of a single man, giving him prestige and ascendency over all other citizens. The downfall of popular institutions has almost always originated in measures imprudently prescribed to preserve them, not because this preservation was not seriously and effectively attempted, but rather because the natural and consistent consequences of causes requisite to the downfall cannot be altered by the will of whoever sets them in motion.

The misfortune of republics consists now, and has always consisted, in the very limited moral and physical force entrusted to the depositaries of power. This necessity that naturally comes along with the system has, as with all human institutions, its advantages and disadvantages. These should be weighed faithfully before their adoption because, once accepted, it is necessary to consider the whole before making a change that, no matter how superficial it may be or may be imagined to be, opens the door to the total change of the system and is a shock that, although superficial, if repeated, slowly undermines the foundations of the social structure until it collapses. What is more attractive than being as far as possible from the control of authority and submitting one’s own person and actions as little as possible to the vigilance and decrees of the agents of power? And in what system, if not the republican, is more space enjoyed and greater breadth given to such privileges? In none, certainly.

Well then, this inestimable good is in greater danger of being lost

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than in any other type of government if free men are not very much on the alert to anticipate every kind of aspiration that tends, if only for a few moments, to reduce their liberty and to augment with these losses the power of the one who begins by directing them and will unfailingly end by dominating them.

The love of power, innate in man and always progressive in government, is much more terrible in republics than monarchies. The one who is sure he will always rule exerts himself little to increase his authority; but the one who sees, even from afar, the end of his greatness if the immense body of the nation and irresistible force of true public opinion do not curb him, always works indefatigably to occupy the highest office if he believes it within reach, or to prolong indefinitely its duration and expand its limits if he has managed to gain it.

The means one can put into play to arrive at this end are infinite, but among the most commonplace are making oneself popular to promote one’s rise, presenting oneself as necessary so as to maintain oneself in the post, and suggesting, so as to destroy the Constitution, the impossibility or ineffectiveness of the fundamental laws.

Among a new people who because of their inexperience have never known liberty, demagogues have an immense field on which to exercise their intrigues, giving free rein to their ambition. Look for popular passions and, once found, flatter them immoderately; proclaim principles, exaggerating them to a degree that makes them odious; and arouse suspicion of all those who have not advanced this far and profess or propound principles of moderation. Here is the means of making oneself popular in a nation made up of men who, for the first time, tread the difficult and always dangerous path of liberty.

What has been done in England, in France, in Spain, and, finally, in all the former Spanish colonies, now independent nations of America? Consider carefully the first period of their revolutions. Follow, keeping in view all the steps of those who afterward have been their masters, and it will be seen, without exception, that they have owed to no other means the popularity that served as stepping-stones to the summit of power.

In fact, people who have lived under an oppressive regime do not believe themselves free when they shake off the chains that held them yoked to the cart of the despot. Rather, they want to break all the ties that unite them with authority and even the necessary dependence that

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brings with it inequality of classes, an inequality owing not to laws but to the various physical and moral faculties with which nature has endowed each man. Because of this they listen with enthusiasm and elevate to all the public offices those who preach that chimerical equality of fortunes, pleasures, and ability to be anything, and they become inflamed with passion against all those who try to cure them of this political fever, smearing them with the most denigrating nicknames, the most contemptuous insults, and the most barbarous persecutions, and forging, without noticing it, the chains that must once again reduce them to servitude.

Robespierre and Marat did not become masters of the destiny of France or spill so much blood by means other than these, and they were a thousand times more destructive than all the kings together whose lineage they overthrew. In the end they fell, as all those of their kind will fall, but leaving the way open for the rise of others who, although more quietly but with a happier outcome, manage for some more time to achieve their goals, placing themselves at the peak of power, violating all social guarantees, and perpetuating the misfortune of the people who, because of a prolonged cycle of miseries and calamities, return to the same point of slavery from which they had set out to embark upon the path of liberty.

The people, after a thousand oscillations and fluctuations, the terror of anarchy over, create a poor or mediocre constitution, and then another fate awaits them. Soon enough, those who, by chance, have owed their promotion to the rule of factions try to give themselves excessive importance, affecting public esteem by means of all the externalities with which such esteem appears to be in agreement, working to persuade others that the stability of the republic depends on the adverse or favorable fate of their personal existence. This error insinuates itself with extraordinary ease and has ready success, especially among people who have not known more of a patria than ground stained by servility and slavery, more rights than the gratuitous and mean concessions of a lord, or more laws than the vain and unstable caprices of an absolute master. From the moment it is believed or feigned to be believed that the fate of liberty and the existence of the republic depend on the political existence of one single man, they find themselves on the verge of ruin. Then he will be granted all manner of condescension; it will be attempted to put aside all the goals of the citizens, of the laws and national

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interests, to fix them to the ambitious person whose aggrandizement is sought; the sacred names of patria and liberty will be defiled, and the poisonous root will be cultivated, which, with the passing of time, will bear nothing but deadly fruit.

Yes, you peoples and nations that have adopted a system of government as beneficial as it is delicate, be very much on guard against that one who tries to make himself necessary and to assign himself greater importance than granted by those who occupy public posts, the Constitution, and the laws. He will begin by flattering you, promising everything, and will end by pushing you down into servitude, superimposing himself on the laws that guarantee public liberties and, if possible, ripping from your hearts all the generous sentiments that the independence of a truly free soul might have rooted in them. Plunge those detestable monsters, those disfigured children, into the abyss of nothingness, their odious memory, weighed down by the public curse, transmitted to posterity.

Having acquired an unmerited importance and the destiny of the patria entrusted to their direction, these men soon fix their intentions on expanding their power by putting themselves in a position to prolong it indefinitely. But what means do they use? How do they obtain this from a people that has enthusiastically adopted the institutions that destroy any arbitrary regime? Here enter all the tactics, all the skill and cunning of the despots of new designation and recent origin: the protectors, liberators, directors, etc.

There is no man so incautious that he endeavors at the outset to seduce an entire people or insult them openly by clear and manifest contempt for the duties to which he has just submitted himself. This would be the sure way to frustrate any plan, and ambitious persons proceed with greater circumspection. What is it, then, that they do? They try to create a large faction, accustom the public to the transgression of the laws, and feign or stir up conspiracies.

It is impossible that a man reduced to his individual strengths could acquire either the prestige or the power necessary to superimpose himself on an entire nation. His intentions and plans will always be mistrusted by the multitude, and they will never have any noteworthy success except with the help of an organized faction that is replicated everywhere, that seizes the voice of the nation, that attacks all who oppose its interests and reduces them to silence and inaction by stirring up

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feelings of fear in those who might take on the faction by the gathering of their forces and the legitimacy of their cause. So, then, the first necessity of an ambitious person is to create a party of this kind.

It is very easy to effect this plan after a revolution lasting many years, in which the belligerent sides have calamitously harassed each other. At that point, the elements necessary to carry out the plan successfully are spread everywhere, and bringing them together does not pose a major difficulty. Many men are left with neither fortune nor employment, and as the overbearing necessity for daily subsistence is greater than all political considerations, they will have no option but to sell themselves to the first one who might purchase them. The fear that all unjust persecution brings with it demoralizes a nation, then destroys the natural generosity of characters, obliges men to lie to themselves and others, to hide their feelings and suppress their ideas through a perpetual and constant contradiction in their speech, and abjectly prostrate themselves before all those from whom, in principle, they hope or fear something. A nation, then, that for many years has traveled this dangerous path and that, moreover, finds itself impoverished because of the accumulation of properties by a small number of citizens, because of its lack of industry and because of the multitude of jobs that encourage aspirationism,¹ is a field open to the intrigues of astute and enterprising ambition and offers a thousand means for the organization of audacious factions.

On these foundations, in fact, ambitious persons rise up and, going on from here, make the first attempts at arbitrariness on persons who are little known, and because of their obscurity do not attract public attention or focus the gaze of the multitude. Normally, such transgressors remain hidden, either because of the ignorance of those who tolerate them or because of the lack of means for exposing and denouncing them to public opinion. From the lowest class it goes, rising gradually, battering the resistance that might be opposed, taking breaks that inspire some confidence, make anxiety disappear, and make citizens conceive the possibility of their security being trampled without protests or in spite of them. Here is where the faction comes in to support the one who pays it. It makes accusations that it repeats ceaselessly, exempting itself from ever proving them, feigning ignorance of any response to them, and

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suggesting gratuitously, although constantly, that those targets of persecution are criminals. Sometimes it tramples those who demand social guarantees, punishing them for sedition. Other times it attacks with prohibited weapons, inserting itself even into the sacredness of the domestic sanctuary in order to make their weaknesses public and obvious. If they are not found there, it does not matter; they are suggested, and with this it gets out of its difficulty. In this way, public attention is distracted from the matter at hand; men of probity and merit are obliged to abandon the field; terror imprints itself on almost all citizens, isolating them in their homes; the consolidation of efforts that would make factions tremble is impeded, and an entire people is dominated, as a whole province gives itself over to a gang of bandits. Thus is formed a phantom of public opinion, much clamor is put forward, a great noise is made, and new levels of power are acquired, which lead to the highest levels, and these to the desired end.

One of the means that ambition has most commonly employed and that has never lost its effectiveness despite the frequency with which it has been used is feigning conspiracies or stirring them up so that they serve as a pretext for the expansion and augmentation of the power it seeks. People who have obtained their liberty and independence at the price of blood are very easy to plunge once more into slavery by using their very desire to prevent those evils. Of course, it begins by making a pretext of the existence of powerful and terrible conspiracies. It makes great mystery of them, sparing no effort to make this conviction well known and popular. When this has been achieved, it ventures the distinction between the good of the republic and observance of the laws. Then it goes on to maintain that the former should be preferred to the latter. It assures that the laws are theories insufficient to govern and ends by openly infringing them, seeking their total abolition as its outsized prize.

This insidious attack on public freedoms is the more terrible to the extent that one takes them as a pretext and hides behind the mask of their preservation. Almost never has it been done without the destruction of the government or the republic. If the people allow themselves to be overtaken by fear of conspiracies and permit the system’s principles to be destroyed in order to extinguish or prevent them, they have already fallen into the trap, and they themselves, with their tolerance or positive concessions, have advanced the evil for which they seek a remedy. The

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first thing sought by the one who tries to establish the arbitrary regime is to have the persons of citizens entirely at his disposal. Once attaining this, he moves without hindrance until he arrives at his goal. To achieve it, he suggests the need to increase the strength of the government by suspension of judicial forms, by laws of exception, and by establishment of tribunals that are all loyal to the power and are under his direction and influence. For this, the system of exaggerating risks and dangers serves admirably.

When Bonaparte disbanded the Consulate of France and destroyed the Directory, the talk in Paris was of an immense and intricate conspiracy in favor of royalism, which never existed except in the minds of the people of his faction. Iturbide, in the attacks he made on the national representation on the third of April and the nineteenth of May, when he fell upon some of its members and dissolved it, made no mention of anything other than the conspiracies he supposed had even penetrated the sanctuary of the laws. Nonetheless, time and subsequent events showed with the greatest clarity that the motive of both strategems was not the good of the patria, or devotion to or concern for public safety, but rather the beginnings of ambition, of augmentation of power and personal aggrandizement.

It matters not at all whether this augmentation is obtained by force or by spontaneous concessions; the effect is always the same. Liberty is destroyed by events contrary to principles, whoever might be the agent to whom they owe their origin. Liberty is not a name empty and devoid of meaning that can be applied to any system of government. Liberty is itself the result of a conjunction of cautionary rules that the observation and experience of many centuries have taught men are necessary to avoid the abuses of the powerful and to secure the persons and goods of the members, not only from the oppressions of individuals, but also from those of the power. And although intended to protect them, many or most times the power degenerates into a malefactor, turning weapons against those who put them in its hands so that it might defend them.

Be convinced, then, citizens who have the happiness of belonging to a republic that has adopted free institutions for its rule—be convinced of the importance of putting a brake on a government that goes beyond or tries to go beyond the boundaries that limit its power; destroy by legal means all those who show aversion to the principles of the system and who have the audacity and brazenness to attack them; distrust all

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the demands relative to the augmentation or concession of powers that are extraconstitutional or contrary to the foundations of the system, no matter what their title or name might be, especially if to attain them the existence or fears of conspiracies is alleged; listen with the greatest distrust to those who speak to you about them for the purpose of provoking you into disposing of the common rules and established order; for if this should be carried out at some time, political crimes will be reproduced unceasingly and freedom will never be seated on its throne in a nation that is a theater of reactions and of persecution, composed of oppressors and oppressed, and that carries in itself the germ of its ruin and de struction.

Peoples and states that make up the Mexican Federation, take warning from France, from the new nations of America, and from the recent events of your history. Fear the power of the ambitious ones and of the factions they call to their assistance. Unite your efforts to destroy them, so will you be invincible; isolated, they will beat you bit by bit. May the law and the national will preside over your destinies and make dominion of factions, etc., cease.