[s. E. DAWSON] THE LINES OF DEMARCATION 499 



all as naval assessors for Spain. Portugal also sent pilots, amongst 

 them some who had sailed in the East. It will be necessary to revert 

 again to this convention ; the point to be noticed here is that the pilots 

 and sailors and astronomers were assessors to give professional inforaia- 

 tion and that there were really two separate processes or inquiries. One 

 related to the location of the line of demarcation, the other to the 

 facts of prior possession or discovery. The Moluccas were the chief 

 subject of dispute and while the Spaniards claimed that they had dis- 

 covered them, without sailing over Portuguese waters, the Portuguese 

 insisted that they had been there first. It is, therefore, evident that 

 the doctrine of right by discovery was strongly held by both sides. The 

 argumentation is very modern in its method. The Emperor insisted 

 that, even if Portugal had discovered the islands (which he denied), 

 that it would not give a title without possession taken, and that no one 

 could truly s'ay that he had found anything which he had not taken pos- 

 session of. This is the precise statement of law in the British case against 

 Venezuela (p. 150), "' that it is not the finding of a thing but the taking 

 " by the finder that gives the title," so that here we have the Emperor 

 Charles V. anticipating Grotius by a hundred years, and Bluntschli 

 and the British foreign office by four hundred years, in a most im- 

 portant doctrine of international law ; and the Emperor went on to 

 appeal to the principles of "general law and natural reason." We may, 

 therefore, see that the only new principle in this branch of international 

 law is a definition of "possession" in a stricter sense, made as late as 

 . 1888 at Berlin. The Badajoz Junta was without result. The Portu- 

 guese would do nothing but assert that the islands were theirs and 

 call upon Spain to give them up first and then try to prove the con- 

 trary, while the Spaniards maintained that they had the islands by 

 possession, but would give them up if Portugal would establish her 

 right by an action under the stipulations of the treaty. 



In 1680, disputes arose about the treaty line on the other side of 

 the world — on the Eiver Plate in South America — ^and another con- 

 vention met, with no better result. The matter was settled in 1750, 

 not by reason or law, but in consequence of a marriage between the two 

 royal houses. 



It remains now to observe that the only rational line drawn on the 

 ocean was that drawn by Pope Alexander VI., and that his line was al- 

 most immediately superseded by another, decided upon by the only two 

 nations seriously occupied at that period in making discoveries. The 

 new line was drawn without reference to the Pope and although during 

 the past four hundred years the papal line of demarcation has been the 

 theme of much indignant writing, the Spaniards and Portuguese were 



Sec. II., 1899. 82. 



