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It had been contem

affairs, between the two countries, in consonance with the closing article of the capitulation of Cuba. plated to name some other person; but the British Vice-Consul, learning the fact, waited upon the Director, and dwelt strongly upon the circumstance, that Mr Castellon had already been in Europe, in a diplomatic capacity, and upon the necessity of having some one at the English Court, acquainted with the routine of diplomatic forms, in order to a favorable termination of his mission. There were some other considerations put forward, which would provoke a smile, if recounted; but the concluding and potential one was worthy of that shrewd "Down Easter," who appears so often on the comic stage, but no where else. The Government was destitute of funds, having exhausted all its available resources, amounting to about $100,000, in the recent brush with Great Britain. The Vice-Consul availed himself of this circumstance to offer, in case Mr. Castellon was appointed, to furnish the Government, wherefrom to defray the expenses of the mission, with a quantity of indigo, which he had on hand, at a price, but little exceeding twice its actual value, and to take therefor, certificates of indebtedness from the State, bearing interest at the moderate rate of two per cent per month! As the British navy had always been at hand to enforce the payment of his claims, and was still ready for any such great national service, this arrangement was not unlikely to prove a very "good speculation." The Government, without means, and flattering itself that, by a fair negotiation at London, it might regain its rights, hesitated for a while, but finally acceded to this proposition, a way of "raising the wind,"quite as novel as any on record. Accordingly, the Envoy Extraordinary made ready to start on his mission, while the Vice-Consul packed his indigo. The British agents did not probably believe Mr. Castellon devoted to their interests, but believed him less inveterate, in his hostility, than any others which had been named. But to guard against the possibility of deception, and fearing that Castellon might stop in the United States, the British Consul at Rialejo received sudden advices, which demanded his presence in England; and, by a singular conjunction, or, as the

senior Weller would call it, a “ werry hextraordinary coincidence," the Consul embarked at the same time, and in the same vessel with Mr. Castellon; and when the latter gentleman expressed his intention of stopping for a short time in the United States, the former thought it wouldn't be unpleasant to do so also! This flexibility on the part of the Consul extended to taking lodgings at the same hotel; in fact, it amounted to the closest surveillance. Mr. Castellon merely addressed a note to Washington, but, pending its reception, set sail for Liverpool.

He presented his credentials in due form, but his connections with the Goverment seems to have been very limited, and, so far as the objects of mission were concerned, of very little effect. To his letters he received tardy and unsatisfactory answers. Meantime, the new claim that the western boundary of Mosquitia extended to the rapids of Machuca was made.

Mr Castellon, finding himself unable to accomplish anything at all satisfactory, prepared to return to Nicaragua. He accordingly, in the month of July last, had an interview of leave with Palmerston, when he was informed that no further discussion could be had with Nicaragua, in reference to Mosquito and San Juan. Palmerston also said to him that "he was well aware that the United States had turned its attention to Central America, and had opened communications with the respective States; but that Nicaragua must indulge no hopes in consequence; for, although he felt disposed to regard the United States with some consideration, so far as her own relations were concerned, yet that her opinion, or her influence, was a matter of small importance, one way or the other, in the policy which Her Majesty's Government had determined on in Central America." Hereupon his Lordship jerked his head contemptuously, and Mr. Castellon was politely bowed out.

A few days thereafter, he received a long letter from the foreign office, in reply to his communications before unanswered, which as it is signed "Palmerston," and seems to be intended as a summing up of the British side of the whole Mosquito question, we subjoin it in extenso. This, then, is the British Exhibit, and here Great Britain rests her case before the world. It might be allowed to pass to that

august jury without one word of comment, with the fullest assurance that the verdict would be rendered against his Lordship on his own showing. But it contains too much that is false in fact, and unfounded in inference, to be allowed to pass thus easily. He who, in a case of grave national impor

tance, involving the highest principles of international law and justice, resorts to the lowest arts of the special pleader, escapes merited justice if allowed to pass without the severest reprehension. The letter follows.

CHAPTER IV.

BRITISH EXHIBIT OF THE MOSQUITO QUESTION-LETTER OF

LORD PALMERSTON.

FOREIGN OFFICE, July 16, 1849. SIR-I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the letter which you addressed to me on the 23d ultimo, in reply to my letter of the 27th of April, relative to the debt due by the State of Nicaragua to certain British subjects, holders of bonds of that State.

As the question whether the State of Nicaragua has a right to include amongst those branches of her revenues which are pledged for the payment of that debt, custom duties to be levied at the port of Grey Town, or in other words, the question as to the validity of the alleged right of Nicaragua to the Port of Grey Town,* forms the essential point in your letter now under consideration, as well as in your preceding letters of the 20th of January, and of the 5th and 19th of March last, I will address myself at once to that question.

they must submit to the loss which may result from their own laches, until the Port which you say is unjustly withheld by Great Britain shall have been restored to Nicaragua.

Upon these propositions I am prepared to join issue with you, and will proceed to show that the Port of Grey Town does not belong and never has rightfully belonged to the State of Nicaragua. This point once demonstrated, the second and third propositions which you deduce from the alleged rights of Nicaragua to Grey Town, must of course and necessarily fall to the ground.

Now, in the first place, I have to remark, that since the people of Nicaragua have never occupied any part of the territory of Mosquito except Grey Town, which they forcibly took possession of only in 1836, the sole pretence upon which the State of Nicaragua can claim In your letter of the 23d ultimo, you say, a right to Grey Town or to any other part of that by the arguments therein employed, you the Mosquito territory belonged to Spain, and the Mosquito territory, is the allegation that have shown. 1st. That the Port of Grey Town is now, de jurè, the property of the State that Nicaragua has inherited the rights of Spain of Nicaragua, and has been so ever since Cenover that territory. But assuming for the pretral America declared itself independent of sent for the sake of argument that Spain had Spain; 2dly. That therefore the revenues of rights over the Mosquito territories, how can customs levied at that Port is justly to be init be shown that those rights have devolved to cluded in those revenues of the State of Ni-Nicaragua? Has Spain ever conferred such caragua, which are pledged for the redemp- rights to Nicaragua by treaty? Certainly

tion of the loan which was contracted for in 1826 by the Republic of Central America with the House of Barclay & Co.; and, 3dly. That the British creditors, are bound to assist the Government of Nicaragua, in establishing its claim to Grey Town; and that if they do not so,

* This is the name which the English have given to San Juan de Nicaragua, since its occupation.

not.

Has Nicaragua obtained them by conquest? Equally not. The people of Nicaragua revolted, indeed, against the King of Spain and obtained by force of arms, and de facto, their practical independence, which, however, I believe, has not up to this day been formally and diplomatically acknowledged by Spain. But the successful revolt of the people of Nicaragua could give them no right, with reference to Spain, except the right of self-govern

ment. The very principle upon which their revolt was founded, and which the success of that revolt established, goes to forbid them from practising towards other nations that kind of oppression from which they had freed themselves. The fact of their having thrown off the yoke of Spain could give them no right to impose their yoke upon the people of Mosquito; the circumstance that they had succeeded in asserting their own freedom from foreign rule, could give them no right to impose their rule upon a people who had always been free, and it is a well known historical fact, that the Mosquito nation had from time immemorial, and up to the period of the revolt of Nicaragua been as free as they have continued to be from that period to the present day. But even supposing that this had not been so, and that the crown of Spain had possessed rights of sovereignty over the Mosquito territory, the people of Nicaragua might as well claim a derivative right from Spain to govern and to be masters of Mexico, New Grenada, or any of the neighboring States of Central America, as to govern and possess by such derivative rights the Mosquito territory, which was never possessed or occupied by the people of Nicaragua. The people of each of the revolted districts of the Spanish American provinces established their own independence and their own rights of self-government within the territory which they actually occupied, but nothing more. If these revolted provinces had imagined that they acquired by the revolt all the rights of Spain, besides determining among each other in what manner those rights were to be apportioned between them, they must also by necessity have considered themselves bound by all the obligations of Spain. But they neither acknowledged these obligations nor were called upon by other countries to adopt them. On the contrary, when their political existence as independent States was acknowledged by foreign countries, they contracted severally with those foreign countries, such new treaties as were applicable to their own respective geographical limits and political conditions, and neither they nor the foreign powers with which they treated, ever thought of considering them inheritors of any rights or obligations, rising out of the treaty engagement of the Spanish Crown. However, if Spain possessed any rights over the Mosquito territory, and if those rights have descended by inheritance to any of the Spanish Republics, it would remain to be proved that such rights have devolved upon Nicaragua rather than upon Honduras, Costa Rica, or New Grenada, and it is probable that each and all of those three States would establish just as good a claim as Nicaragua, and probably a better one to the inheritance of any such rights, if such rights had existed.

But I deny totally and entirely that Spain had any right to the Mosquito territory, and I therefore contend, that there is no inheritance whatever, in this respect, which can become the subject matter of dispute. On the contrary, the King of the Mosquitos has, from a very early period in the history of America, been an independent ruler of a separate territory, and he has invariably been acknowledged and upheld by the Government of Great Britain. It is quite true that by the convention of 1786 between Great Britain and Spain, Great Britain agreed to withdraw British subjects from the Mosquito territory. But Great Britain did not by that treaty either acknowledge that the Mosquitos were not an independent nation, or renounce her protectionship of that nation. On the contrary, the stipulation of the treaty of 1786 clearly mentions the Mosquitos as a nation distinct from the people living within the Spanish Dominions, and that treaty contains a stipulation which was an act of protectorship exercised by Great Britain in favor of the Mosquito nation.

In order to understand fully the treaty of 1786, it is necessary to revert to the treaty of 1783.

It

appears

from the 6th article of the treaty of 1783, that several English settlements having been made and extended upon the Spanish continent, on the pretence of cutting logwood or dyeing wood, and Great Britain and Spain being desirous of preventing as much as possible the causes of complaint and misunderstanding to which this intermixture of British and Spanish wood-cutters gave rise, it was thought expedient that the Government (Spanish) should assign to British subjects, for the purpose of wood-cutting, a separate and sufficiently extensive and convenient district on the Coast of America, and that in consideration of such an assignment, British subjects should be restricted from forming settlements on any other part of the Spanish territories in America, whether continental or insular, and that all British subjects dispersed in those Spanish possessions, should, within eighteen months after the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty, retire within the district specially assigned for their occupation and

use.

It seems, however, that the treaty of 1783 did not sufficiently accomplish the purpose of preventing complaints and misunderstandings. It was found by Great Britain, on the one hand, that the district assigned on the Coast of Honduras to British subjects by the 6th article of the treaty of 1783, was too limited in extent, and the enjoyment of it much narrowed by the restrictions contained in the article. It was found by Spain, on the other hand, that British subjects still lingered in parts of the Spanish American territories, and the Spanish

Government found, moreover, that there were many British subjects settled in the Mosquito territory, to which the treaty of 1783 did not apply, as that treaty mentioned only the Spanish possessions in America, and said nothing about Mosquito, and did not require that British subjects should retire from Mosquito, and it seems that the revenues to Spain suffered from smuggling transactions carried on by British subjects so settled on the Spanish territory and in Mosquito.

To put an end to these mutual inconveniences, it was agreed by the convention of 1786 that a larger extent of territory should be assigned to British subjects on the Coast of Honduras, according to new boundaries described in that convention; and it was also agreed that the enlarged territory so granted should be occupied by British subjects with a greater latitude of enjoyments than was allowed by the restrictions of the treaty of 1783; and in return, in order to relieve the Spanish Government from loss by smuggling, the British Government again bound itself to recall British subjects from the Spanish possessions in America, and also took the new engagement of withdrawing British subjects from the Mosquito territory, as well as from the Spanish possessions; and the British Government further engaged, that British subjects so withdrawn and confined to the ceded district in Honduras, should, in their communications from thence to the Spanish territories, conform to such regulations as to custom duties, as the Spanish Government might think proper to establish among its own subjects.

The manner in which the Mosquito territory is, in the convention of 1786, contra-distinguished from the possessions of Spain, which alone had been mentioned in the treaty of 1783, clearly proves that by the understanding of both parties, the Mosquito territory and the possessions of Spain were separate and different things.

Spanish possessions in that quarter would have had no frontier, except the tide line of the ocean, and upon such frontier no Indians could dwell, to whom arms and warlike stores could be furnished. It is plain, therefore, that the treaty of 1786 proves, that the Mosquitos were considered by the contracting parties as a nation, separate and independent, and were not acknowledged by Great Britain as belonging to Spain. But that treaty also proves, that Great Britain still sheltered the Mosquitos under her protection; for while the British Government agreed, for fiscal reasons, to withdraw from Mosquito those British subjects, whose presence therein, being a visible symbol of the protectorship of Great Britain, would secure the Mosquitos from any act of hostility on the part of the Spaniards, the British Government exacted from the Government of Spain, as an equivalent security for Mosquitos, an engagement not to retaliate upon the people of Mosquito, on account of the co-operation and assistance which the Mosquitos had afforded to the British in the hostilities which had taken place between Spain and Great Britain before the peace of 1783. This stipulation was a substantial and effectual act of protectorship on the part of Great Britain, acquiesced in and subscribed to by Spain.

It is demonstrable, therefore, that the conver tion of 1786 did not invalidate either the independence of Mosquito, or the protectorship of Great Britain; but if it had invalidated both, as between Great Britain and Spain, what would that have been to Nicaragua? or how could a convention, which was "res inter alios acta," have had any bearing whatever upon the rights or pretensions of Nicaragua.

I might well content myself to close here my answer to your notes; and having proved a negative, I might abstain from going into a proof of the opposite affirmative. Having shown that Nicaragua has no claim whatever to the Mosquito territory, it would seem unnecessary for my argument with you, to show by any other evidence than the documents which you yourself have quoted, that long before Nicaragua came into existence as a State, Great Britain exercised a protectorship over the Mosquitos, as a separate nation. But, never

even at the risk of making this letter needlessly long, I will mention one or two facts which clearly demonstrate that it was so.

But any pretension of Spain to rights over the Mosquito territory, of which she had no possession, could only be founded upon a general claim of sovereignty over the whole of that Central portion of the American Continent. But if that claim existed, Spain could not have acknowledged that she had in that part of Amer-theless, ica any frontiers, except the two oceans; and, yet by article 14th of the treaty of 1786, the British Government engages not to allow British subjects to furnish arms or warlike stores to the Indians, in general situated upon the frontiers of the Spanish possessions; and by the immediately preceding mention of the Mosquitos, in the very same sentence, it is sufficiently clear that they were intended to be included among the number of Indians situated upon the frontiers of the Spanish possessions. But if Mosquito had belonged to Spain, the

At what time and in what manner the connection between Great Britain and the Mosquito Nation first began, is not well known; but it is certain, and on record, that while the Duke of Albemarle was Governor of Jamaica, to which office he was appointed in 1687, the Mosquito Indians made a formal cession of the sovereignty of their country to the King of England, and that in consequence of that cession, the chief of the Mosquitos, received his

appointment as King, by a commission given to him by the Governor of Jamaica, in the name and on the behalf of the King of England. Somewhat more than thirty years afterwards, namely, on the 25th of June 1720, as appears by the Journals of the House of Assembly of Jamaica, a convention about runaway slaves was concluded between the then Governor of Jamaica, and King Jeremy of the Mosquitos.

From that time downwards, during the reigns of George 1st, 2d, and 3d, the connection of Great Britain and the Mosquito continued uninterrupted and unimpaired, and at times during that period there were British settlers established in the Mosquito territory with a British resident officer, appointed by the Governor and Council of Jamaica, on behalf of the British Crown, to superintend those settlers; and the Council of Jamaica, in a report to Governor Dallas, on the 16th of July, 1774, adverting to the inland boundary of the Mosquito territory, mention it as running along distant mountains," which bound the Spanish territory, a clear proof that Mosquito was a separate State and did not belong to Spain. But colonial records of the British Government abound with correspondence about the Mosquito King and nation, proving not only the strong and constant interest taken by the British Government in their welfare, but the close and intimate connection which has uninter

the

ruptedly subsisted between Great Britain and Mosquito.

Grey Town, there are, on the contrary, good and substantial reasons which can be alleged to show, that the rights of the Mosquito extend southward, as far as the Boca del Toro, at which place, the King of Mosquito has, at various times, exercised rights, by levying duties.

Such being the state of the matter, it can scarcely be necessary for me to say, that Her Majesty's Government cannot allow the Government of Nicaragua to mix up its unfounded pretensions to the territory of Mosquito, with the just claims of the British creditors upon Nicaragua ; and any attempt on the part of the Nicaraguan Government to do so would constitute one of those cases of denial of justice and of notorious injustice, which you yourself admit would entitle Her Majesty's Government to exercise an authoritative interference in the discussion between the British bond-holders and the Nicaraguan Government. In saying this, however, I beg not to be misunderstood, as admitting that such an authoritative interference would be proper and legitimate only in such an extreme case, a case which my respect for the Nicaraguan Government forbids me from considering to be possible as between the British bond-holders and that Government.

But, as in a matter of this kind, it is desirable that no mistake should be allowed to exist, I beg to say, that it is quite certain and indisputable, that, according to international. If it be established, as it clearly is, that the laws, the Government of any country is at full Mosquito territory, is, and for centuries has liberty to take up, according to its own disbeen, a separate State, distinct from the Amer-cretion, in such manner, and at such times as ican possessions of Spain, there cannot be a it may think fit, any just claim which any of moment's doubt that the Port of Grey Town its subjects may have against the Governat the mouth of the river San Juan, belongs ment of any other country. to and forms part of the Mosquito territory. This can be shown by quotations from numerous authorities, public and private, official and literary; and so far from there being any just ground to doubt that the southern extremity of the Mosquito territory includes the Port of

I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant,
(Signed) PALMERSTON.

CHAPTER V.

ANALYSIS AND REFUTATION OF THE BRITISH EXHIBIT.

IT has been said that falsehood circles the world, while truth is putting on his boots, or something to that effect. A liar may make an assertion in one sentence, which it may require a page to prove to be a falsehood. Our readers must, therefore, pardon us, if

our answer to this letter appears long and tedious.

In making the assertion, that Nicaragua has never occupied any portion of the territory of Mosquito, his Lordship forgets that the last claim which he himself has put

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