212 NOOTKA CONVENTION BEFORE PARLIAMENT. [1790. 



providing reparation for the injuries sustained by its subjects, and 

 as securing to those subjects, in future, the rights of navigation and 

 fishery in the Pacific and Southern Oceans, and of settlement on 

 their unoccupied coasts, and establishing the long-discussed ques- 

 tions on those points, on such grounds as must prevent all further 

 dispute. The opposition, on the other hand, contended that the 

 reparation promised by Spain was incomplete and insufficient; 

 that the arrangements for the prevention of future difficulties were 

 merely culpable concessions to that power, whereby the rights of 

 British subjects were materially abridged, and the Spaniards would 

 be encouraged to commit further acts of violence ; and, finally, 

 that all the advantages which could be expected from the con- 

 vention, even according to the views of the ministers, were far 

 below the amount of the expense at which they had been obtained. 



It was noticed by Mr. Charles Fox, as a curious and inexplicable 

 incongruity in the treaty, that " about the month of April, 1789." 

 should have been inserted as the date of what was known to have 

 taken place, agreeably to all the evidence produced, in May of the 

 same year ; and that, although, by the first article, the lands and 

 buildings declared to have been taken from British subjects by a 

 Spanish officer, " about the month of April, 1789," were to be 

 restored, yet, by the second article, the lands, buildings, and other 

 property, of which the subjects of either party had been dispos- 

 sessed "subsequent to the month of April, 1789," were to be 

 restored, or compensation was to be made to the owners for the 

 losses which they might have sustained. Upon this point, it will be 

 seen that, if the word " or," in the concluding part of the second 

 article, were replaced by and, the incongruity would disappear ; 

 but then, also, the first article would become entirely superfluous. 

 It would, however, be idle to suppose that any error could have 

 been committed with regard to matters so essential, or that the 

 want of accordance between the different provisions of the con- 

 vention, noticed by Mr. Fox, should have been the result of accident 

 or carelessness. The ministers, when pressed for explanations on 

 this head, answered, indirectly, that the Spanish government would 

 make the restitutions as agreed in the first article. 



It may here be observed, that no notice whatsoever of a claim, 

 on the part of British subjects, to lands or buildings on the north- 

 west coast of America, appears either in the king's message to 

 Parliament, communicating the fact of the seizures at Nootka, or 



