AVES ISLAND. 339 



the condition of a thing liable to be acquired by occupation, it now 

 devolves upon him to point out the acts of the owner, significant of 

 this abandonment. "As everything embraced in a country belongs 

 to the nation ; and as none but the nation, or the person intrusted 

 with its powers, is authorized to dispose of any such thing, if it have 

 left waste and uncultivated places in the country, no one has the right 

 to take possession of them without its consent. Although they may 

 not actually be put to uses, still those places belong to it ; it has an 

 interest in preserving them for future use, and it is answerable to no 

 one for the manner in which it makes use of its property." (Vattel, 

 Law of Nations.) 



In view of this principle and of the law maxim that the mere inten- 

 tion of possessing is enough to preserve possession for us, although 

 we may not be in the actual enjoyment of the thing ; licet possessio 

 outdo animo acquiri non possit, tamen solo animo refireri potef^t ; and a 

 consequence of the above mentioned point being that the ceasing of 

 enjoying a thing is not sufficient to warrant the loss of it, but that 

 there must also be an intention of abandoning its possession ; it fol- 

 lows, beyond doubt, that proof of the abandonment is necessarily re- 

 quired, and so much the more required that if such proof be not made, 

 presumptions of bad faith must stand against the claimants, because 

 they do not ground their claim of possession on any title, in conso- 

 nance with the generally admitted doctrines. 



Although many examples might be quoted to show how nations 

 accept and apply the rule of Vattel, it will be enough to mention one, 

 which is adduced by Raynal in his philosophical history of the Indies, 

 in relation to the Lucayas Islands: "There are something like two 

 hundred of them," he says, "all lying north of Cuba. The majority 

 of them are bare rocks on the surface of the waters. Columbus, who 

 discovered them upon his arrival in the New World, and gave the 

 name of San Salvador to the island where he landed, left no settlement 

 there, nor did the Spaniards thereafter make any establishments. _ But 

 in 1507, all their population was removed, and it soon perished in the 

 labor of the mines or in the prosecution of pearl fishery. This small 

 archipelago was left entirely deserted, when, in 1672, it occurred to 

 some Englishmen to go and take possession of Providence Island. 

 Having been expelled, seven or eight years afterwards, by orders from 

 the court of Spain ; they returned in 1690, to be again expelled in 

 1703, by the united forces of Spain and France." 



Here we have islands the bare and naked discovery of which Spain 

 could claim, islands in which slie made no settlement, islands over 

 which she exercised dominion, and from which she repeatedly drove 

 away the English, who had occupied them, although they were unin- 

 habited at the time. 



To the observations of the note of Venezuela as to the inability of 

 private individuals acquiring property in competition with a sovereign 

 State, Mr. Eames returns no answer, save one of threat; and the ques- 

 tion iDeing thus forced from its appropriate ground, there is nothing 

 left of it but the extent of power of the contending parties. But the 

 government of the United States, which is aware that the rights of 

 nations are independent of their greater or less degree of strength, will 



