The archbishops, bishops, and grandees, were to meet in an upper house: it was required that the grandees should be the heads of their respective families, and above the age of 25; and those nobles and prelates who had submitted to the French government were excluded.
Such was the plan which the commission of the central Junta decided upon, and which the Junta adopted. The commission was composed of five members, the Archbishop of Laodicea, Jovellanos, Castanedo, Caro and Riquelme; but the two latter members being appointed to the executive committee, their places were supplied by the Count de Ayamans, and D. Martin de Garay. D. Manuel Abella, and D. Pedro Polo de Alcocer, were secretaries to the commission. The details were formed, and the official instructions drawn up by Garay. In their general principles the commissioners had been chiefly guided, as was expected and desired, by Jovellanos, the best and wisest of the Spaniards.
There was, however, a difference of opinion in the commission upon three points of considerable importance. Riquelme and Caro would have had only one house of assembly; Jovellanos referred to the English constitution, as the best model, and one to which in this point, the Spaniards, with sufficient conformity to their ancient customs, might assimilate their own. He proposed also, that certain qualifications of property, situation, and acquirements, should be required of the deputies. Riquelme opposed this restriction; and Jovellanos yielded to the majority of his colleagues with less repugnance, knowing how well the great body of the people had deserved of their country. Riquelme insisted that the Cortes should not assemble without deputies from the colonies; the other members would have omitted them in the first assembly, in consequence of the long and indefinite time which must elapse before they could be chosen in their respective provinces, and arrive in Spain. The plan which was adopted obviated this difficulty. The inadequate number of colonial deputies is less objectionable than it may at first appear, when the probable number of persons from whom the supplementaries were to be chosen is considered; especially as it was not pretended that the manner in which the first Cortes was convoked should be binding as a precedent. “The government,” said Jovellanos, “fearful of arrogating to itself a right which belongs to the nation alone, leaves it to the wisdom and prudence of the nation to determine in what form its will may most completely be represented in future.”