684 
answer as soon as I could re- 
ceive it. 
I have the honour to be, &e. 
Whitworth. 
Right Hon. Lord Hawkes- 
bury, &c. §e. &e. 
No 36. 
Dispatch from Lord Hawkesbury to 
Lord Whitworth, dated February 
9, 1803. 
My lord, 
In answer to your excellency’s 
dispatch of January 27, relative to 
the enquiry made of you, by the 
French government, on the subject 
of Malta, I can hayeno difficulty in 
assuring you, that his majesty has 
entertained a most sincere desire 
that the treaty of Amiens might be 
executed in a fulland complete man- 
ner; but it has not been possible 
for him to consider this treaty as 
having been founded on principles 
different from those which have been 
invariably applied to every other 
antecedent treaty of convention, 
namely, that they were negociated 
with reference to the actual state of 
possession of the different parties, 
and of the treaties of public engage- 
ments by which they were bound at 
the time of its conclusion ; and that 
if that state of possession, and of 
engagements, was so materially al- 
tered by the act of cither of the par- 
ties, as to affect the nature of the 
compact itself, the other party has 
a right, according to the law of na- 
tions, to interfere for the purpose 
of obtaining satisfaction or compen- 
sation for any essential diffcrence 
which such acts may have subse- 
quently made in their relative situa- 
tion: that, if there ever was a case 
to which this principle might be ap- 
plied with peculiar propriety, it was 
that of the late treaty of peace; for 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1803. 
the negociation was conduéted ona 
basis not merely proposed by his 
majesty, but specially agreed to in 
an official note by the I’rench go- 
vernment, viz. that his majesty 
should keep a compensation out of 
his conquests for the important ac- 
quisitions of territory made by 
France upon the continent. This 
is a sufiicient proof that the compact 
was understuod to have been con- 
cluded with reference to the then 
existing state of things; for the mea- 
sure of his majesty’s compensation 
was to be calculated with reference 
to the acquisitions of France at that 
time ; and if the interference of the 
French government in the gencral 
afiairs of Europe, since that period ; 
if their interposition with respect to 
Switzerland and Holland, whose 
independence was guaranteed by 
them at the time of the conclusion - 
of the treaty of peace ; if the an- 
nexations which haye been made to 
France in various quarters, but par- 
ticularly those in Italy, have ex- 
tended the territory, and increased 
the power of the French govern- 
ment ; his majesty would be war- 
ranted, consistently with the spirit 
of the treaty of peace, in claiming 
equivalents for these acquisitions, 
as a counterpoise to the augmenta- 
tion of the power of France. His 
majesty, however, anxious to pre- 
vent all ground of misunderstanding, 
and desirous of consolidating the 
general peace of Europe, as far as 
might be in his power, was willing 
to have waved the pretensions he 
might have a right to advance of this 
nature ; and as the other articles of 
the definitive treaty have been in a 
course of execution on his part, so 
he would have been ready to have 
carried into effect the true intent 
and spirit of the 10th article, the | 
execution 
