We are not Europeans; we are not Indians; we are but a mixed species of aborigines and
Spaniards. Americans by birth and Europeans by law, we find ourselves engaged in a dual
conflict: we are disputing with the natives for titles of ownership, and at the same time
we are struggling to maintain ourselves in the country that gave us birth against the
opposition of the invaders. Thus our position is most extraordinary and complicated. But
there is more. As our role has always been strictly passive and political existence nil,
we find that our quest for liberty is now even more difficult of accomplishment; for we,
having been placed in a state lower than slavery, had been robbed not only of our freedom
but also of the right to exercise an active domestic tyranny. . .We have been ruled more
by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition.
Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own
destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all
political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take
license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people,
perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it,
for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the
practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants,
because, as the laws are more inflexible, every one should submit to their beneficent
austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice
justice is to practice liberty.
Although those people [North Americans], so lacking in many respects, are unique in the
history of mankind, it is a marvel, I repeat, that so weak and complicated a government as
the federal system has managed to govern them in the difficult and trying circumstances of
their past. But, regardless of the effectiveness of this form of government with respect
to North America, I must say that it has never for a moment entered my mind to compare the
position and character of two states as dissimilar as the English-American and the
Spanish-American. Would it not be most difficult to apply to Spain the English system of
political, civil, and religious liberty: Hence, it would be even more difficult to adapt
to Venezuela the laws of North America.
Nothing in our fundamental laws would have to be altered were we to adopt a legislative
power similar to that held by the British Parliament. Like the North Americans, we have
divided national representation into two chambers: that of Representatives and the Senate.
The first is very wisely constituted. It enjoys all its proper functions, and it requires
no essential revision, because the Constitution, in creating it, gave it the form and
powers which the people deemed necessary in order that they might be legally and properly
represented. If the Senate were hereditary rather than elective, it would, in my opinion,
be the basis, the tie, the very soul of our republic. In political storms this body would
arrest the thunderbolts of the government and would repel any violent popular reaction.
Devoted to the government because of a natural interest in its own preservation, a
hereditary senate would always oppose any attempt on the part of the people to infringe
upon the jurisdiction and authority of their magistrates. . .The creation of a hereditary
senate would in no way be a violation of political equality. I do not solicit the
establishment of a nobility, for as a celebrated republican has said, that would
simultaneously destroy equality and liberty. What I propose is an office for which the
candidates must prepare themselves, an office that demands great knowledge and the ability
to acquire such knowledge. All should not be left to chance and the outcome of elections.
The people are more easily deceived than is Nature perfected by art; and although these
senators, it is true, would not be bred in an environment that is all virtue, it is
equally true that they would be raised in an atmosphere of enlightened education. The
hereditary senate will also serve as a counterweight to both government and people; and as
a neutral power it will weaken the mutual attacks of these two eternally rival powers.
The British executive power possesses all the authority properly appertaining to a
sovereign, but he is surrounded by a triple line of dams, barriers, and stockades. He is
the head of government, but his ministers and subordinates rely more upon law than upon
his authority, as they are personally responsible; and not even decrees of royal authority
can exempt them from this responsibility. The executive is commander in chief of the army
and navy; he makes peace and declares war; but Parliament annually determines what sums
are to be paid to these military forces. While the courts and judges are dependent on the
executive power, the laws originate in and are made by Parliament. Give Venezuela such an
executive power in the person of a president chosen by the people or their
representatives, and you will have taken a great step toward national happiness. No matter
what citizen occupies this office, he will be aided by the Constitution, and therein being
authorized to do good, he can do no harm, because his ministers will cooperate with him
only insofar as he abides by the law. If he attempts to infringe upon the law, his own
ministers will desert him, thereby isolating him from the Republic, and they will even
bring charges against him in the Senate. The ministers, being responsible for any
transgressions committed, will actually govern, since they must account for their actions.
A republican magistrate is an individual set apart from society, charged with checking
the impulse of the people toward license and the propensity of judges and administrators
toward abuse of the laws. He is directly subject to the legislative body, the senate, and
the people: he is the one man who resists the combined pressure of the opinions,
interests, and passions of the social state and who, as Carnot states, does little more
than struggle constantly with the urge to dominate and the desire to escape domination.
This weakness can only be corrected by a strongly rooted force. It should be strongly
proportioned to meet the resistance which the executive must expect from the legislature,
from the judiciary, and from the people of a republic. Unless the executive has easy
access to all the administrative resources, fixed by a just distribution of powers, he
inevitably becomes a nonentity or abuses his authority. By this I mean that the result
will be the death of the government, whose heirs are anarchy, usurpation, and tyranny. . .
Therefore, let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of
power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay
because of its own tenuity. Precisely because no form of government is so weak as the
democratic, its framework must be firmer, and its institutions must be studied to
determine their degree of stability...unless this is done, we will have to reckon with an
ungovernable, tumultuous, and anarchic society, not with a social order where happiness,
peace, and justice prevail.
Source:
From: Simón Bolívar, An Address of Bolivar at the Congress of Angostura (February
15, 1819), Reprint Ed., (Washington, D.C.: Press of B. S. Adams, 1919), passim.
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton.
This text is part of the Internet
Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and
copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.
