Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Second Session of the Fortieth Congress

[Translation]

Señor Ceron to President Mosquera

No. 108.]

United States of Colombia, Presidency of the Supreme Federal Court, Bogota, December 7, 1866.

I have given an account to the supreme federal court, over which I have the honor to preside, of your formal renunciation of the post of President of the Union, which you presented through me in your letter of the 6th instant.

The supreme federal court, after a careful and mature deliberation, believes it ought not to accept your renunciation, and consequently I, who am its organ on the present occasion, hasten to inform you that the said body does not accept the same.

However grave, however well-founded the motives which have impelled you to lay aside the powers which the people conferred on you by calling you in a manner so spontaneous as significant to occupy the position of the First Magistrate of the Union, the court does not believe them sufficient to justify your withdrawal from the public administration, and above all at the present time, when society is alarmed, as you assert, by serious fears of being over-turned, and when your presence in the government is a guarantee of order and security to the people who, having trusted to your patriotism, in your past example, and in your elevated administrative gifts, called you, when absent from the country, to direct their destinies by filling the high post of chief of the executive branch of thegovernment.

If the exercise of the public power and the patriotic defence of the national interests which you, have undertaken have given you annoying cares, they are so much the more meritorious, as is all the more notorious the purity of your intentions and the elevation of the ideas which have directed your policy. Wherefore, the court does not see in those annoying cares a cause sufficiently powerful for your renouncing the constitutional and legal powers conferred on you by the people.

Furthermore, you insinuate in your renunciation that you have the means and the will to stifle the revolution which may break out. The court would assume a grave moral responsibility before the republic were it to consent to your withdrawal, and in effect to allow the public peace to be disturbed, which you promise to preserve, and the people, with abundant justice, would disapprove the proceeding of the court in this important affair.

ANDRES CERON.

Citizen Great General President of the United States of Colombia.

[Translation.]

Proclamation.

T. C. de Mosquera, great general of the Union, President of the United States of Colombia, to the Colombians:

Fellow-Citizens: The first duty of the President of Colombia is to uphold the constitution and preserve the precious achievements which we have secured in behalf of democratic liberty. It has come to my knowledge that it is believed in some states that the preservation of peace and material progress of the country depends on the continuation of my administration, and that some citizens have occupied themselves with the idea of a possible re-election. If I were to allow this idea to pass unnoticed I should be wanting in my duty to maintain intact the holy book of our rights. In it is written that there can be no immediate re-election, and I declare that if, by any misguided proceeding, I shall be re-elected I cannot accept the continuation in power, for the man who has bestowed on him the confidence of the country ought not to lend himself to an act contrary to the constitution.

Countrymen, if I can ask you for anything as a recompense for my sacrifies for the country it is that you respect the constitution. In the day of danger to independence and liberty you will find me at the side of the defenders of the right.

Nothing can be more honorable to the loyal servant of the country than to march without faltering by the road of honor. The Colombians must all be united to save our institutions, and you will find me ready on all occasions when the safety of the Colombian people may need it to devote myself to their cause. The badge of a good republican is obedience to the people, and on the latter rest our constitution and the peace of the country.

T. C. DE MOSQUERA.

JOSÉ MARIA ROJAS GARRIDO, Secretary of the Interior and Foreign Relations.

RUDECINDO LOPEZ, Secretary of War and Marine.

FROILAN LARGACHA, Secretary of the Treasury and National Credit.

ALEJO MORALES, Secretary of Finance and Public Works.

Bogota, December 14, 1866.