On the following day, he executed another instrument of most singular import, in which, after avowing in unequivocal terms his daughter's incapacity, he engages to assist Philip in preventing any interference in her behalf, and to maintain him, as far as in his power, in the sole, exclusive authority. [50]
Before signing these papers, he privately made a protest, in the presence of several witnesses, that what he was about to do was not of his own free will, but from necessity, to extricate himself from his perilous situation, and shield the country from the impending evils of a civil war. He concluded with asserting, that, so far from relinquishing his claims to the regency, it was his design to enforce them, as well as to rescue his daughter from her captivity, as soon as he was in a condition to do so. [51] Finally, he completed this chain of inconsistencies by addressing a circular letter, dated July 1st, to the different parts of the kingdom, announcing his resignation of the government into the hands of Philip and Joanna, and declaring the act one which, notwithstanding his own right and power to the contrary, he had previously determined on executing, so soon as his children should set foot in Spain. [52]
It is not easy to reconcile this monstrous tissue of incongruity and dissimulation with any motives of necessity or expediency. Why should he, so soon after preparing to raise the kingdom in his daughter's cause, thus publicly avow her imbecility, and deposit the whole authority in the hands of Philip? Was it to bring odium on the head of the latter, by encouraging him to a measure which he knew must disgust the Castilians? [53] But Ferdinand by this very act shared the responsibility with him. Was it in the expectation that uncontrolled and undivided power, in the hands of one so rash and improvident, would the more speedily work his ruin? As to his clandestine protest, its design was obviously to afford a plausible pretext at some future time for reasserting his claims to the government, on the ground, that his concessions had been the result of force. But then, why neutralize the operation of this, by the declaration, spontaneously made in his manifesto to the people, that his abdication was not only a free, but most deliberate and premeditated act? He was led to this last avowal, probably, by the desire of covering over the mortification of his defeat; a thin varnish, which could impose on nobody. The whole of the proceedings are of so ambiguous a character as to suggest the inevitable inference, that they flowed from habits of dissimulation too strong to be controlled, even when there was no occasion for its exercise. We occasionally meet with examples of a similar fondness for superfluous manoeuvring in the humbler concerns of private life.