1771.] SETTLEMENT OF THE DISPUTE. Ill 



generally believed, in consequence of a secret engagement to that 

 effect, concluded between the parties * at the time of the settlement 



* The existence of such an engagement was first insinuated by Junius, in his letter 

 of January 30th, 1771, and was soon after directly charged, in parliament, by eminent 

 members, without reply from the ministers. Johnson made no attempt to deny it in 

 his Thoughts, &c, but, on the contrary, in an edition published after the evacuation 

 by the British, he admits that the " island was, perhaps, kept only to quiet clamors, 

 with an intention, not then wholly concealed, of quitting it in a short time." That 

 the British ministers did engage to evacuate Port Egmont, soon after it should have 

 been restored, is positively asserted in the Anecdotes of the Life of Lord Chatham, 

 in the Histoire de la Diplomatie Francaise, by Flassan, and in the Histories of Eng- 

 land, by Bisset, Belsham, Hughes, and Wade ; while Coote and Adolphus both admit 

 that an assurance to the same effect was made to Spain prior to the settlement of the 

 dispute. The Pictorial History of England, published in 1841, states the belief as to 

 the existence of the secret engagement, leaving the question as to its truth undeter- 

 mined. In fine, it was regarded as an established fact, that, at the time of the conclu- 

 sion of the dispute, an engagement or promise was made by the British government to 

 that of Spain, to withdraw all British subjects from the Falkland Islands within a short 

 time after Port Egmont should have been restored to Great Britain; and this fact re- 

 mained unquestioned until the 8th of January, 1834, when Lord Palmerston, the 

 British secretary for foreign affairs, in answer to a protest on the part of the gov- 

 ernment of Buenos Ayres against the recent occupation of the Falkland Islands by 

 Great Britain, formally denied it, and produced a number of extracts from corre- 

 spondence beticeen British ministers and their oxen agents, which he considered as 

 affording " conclusive evidence that no such secret understanding could have existed," 

 as it is not mentioned in those extracts. The papers cited by Lord Palmerston, and 

 the arguments which he draws from them, are, however, insufficient to change the 

 general belief on the subject; for in none of them should we expect to find any allu- 

 sion to the engagement in question. There is no apparent reason that the ministers 

 should have informed any of the persons addressed in these letters of their promise 

 to evacuate the islands ; while, on the other hand, it was clearly important for them 

 to suppress all proof of their having made such an engagement, which the whole 

 British people would have considered dishonoring. It is no novelty in diplomacy, 

 that an ambassador should be kept in ignorance of matters settled or discussed be- 

 tween his own ministers of state and those of the government to which he is accred- 

 ited; and the very negotiation by which this dispute was terminated, was carried on 

 through the agency of the secretary of the French embassy at London, while the 

 ambassador himself knew nothing about it. 



Equally inefficient to produce conviction is the assertion of Lord Palmerston in 

 the same letter, "that the reservation (with regard to the sovereignty of the Falkland 

 Islands) contained in the Spanish declaration cannot be admitted to possess any sub- 

 stantial weight, inasmuch as no notice whatever is taken of it in the British counter- 

 declaration. ." In the first place, no counter -declaration was made on the occasion: 

 the British minister presented, in return for the Spanish ambassador's declaration, a 

 paper containing not a word of contradiction, and which is, as it was styled when 

 submitted to parliament, an acceptance. These two documents — the only ones which 

 are as yet knoicn to have passed on the conclusion of the dispute — ■ cannot be sepa- 

 rated in reasoning on their contents, but must be taken together, as forming one con- 

 vention, admitted by both parties ; for it will not be pretended that the Spanish ambas- 

 sador delivered his declaration, without full knowledge of the answer which was to 

 be made to it. The silence of the British minister on the subject of the reservation 

 amounts, at least, to an acknowledgment that the fact of the restitution of Port Egmont 

 was not regarded as a surrender by Spain of her claim of sovereignty over the Islands. 



