320 THE NOOTKA CONVENTION EXPIRED IN 1796. [1819. 



acknowledge these rights as existing in any other power with 

 regard to the Pacific and Southern Oceans and their American 

 coasts ; and, by the Nootka convention, she merely engaged to 

 desist from the exercise of privileges claimed by her in those seas 

 and coasts, so far as British subjects might be affected by them, 

 on condition that Great Britain should desist from the exercise of 

 privileges claimed by her, in the same quarters of the world. After 

 the abrogation of the convention by war, each nation might again 

 assert and exercise the privileges claimed by it before the conclusion 

 of the compact ; and neither could be regarded as bound by any 

 of the restrictions defined in that instrument, until they had been 

 formally renewed by express consent of both the original parties. 



The war begun by Spain against Great Britain, in 1796, con- 

 tinued, with the intermission of the two years of uncertainty suc- 

 ceeding the peace of Amiens, until 1809, when those nations were 

 again allied, in opposition to France. Since that period, they have 

 remained constantly at peace with each other. The only engage- 

 ment made between them for the renewal of treaties subsisting 

 before 1796, is contained in the first of the three additional articles 

 to the treaty of Madrid, signed on the 24th of August, 1814, wherein 

 "It is agreed that, pending the negotiation of a new treaty of com- 

 merce, Great Britain shall be admitted to trade with Spain, upon the 

 same conditions as those which existed previously to 1796 ; all the 

 treaties of commerce, which at that period subsisted betioeen the two 

 nations, being hereby ratified and confirmed." Thus the Nootka 

 convention could not have been in force at any time between Octo- 

 ber, 1796, and August, 1814; nor since that period, unless it were 

 renewed by the additional article above quoted. That the first part 

 of this article related only to trade between the European dominions 

 of Great Britain and Spain, is certain, because no trade had ever 

 been allowed, by treaty or otherwise, between either kingdom, or its 

 colonies, and the colonies of the other, except in the single case of 

 the Asiento, concluded in 1713, and abrogated in 1740, agreeably 

 to which the British South Sea Company supplied the Spanish 

 colonies with negro slaves during that period ; and because, more- 

 over, by an article in the treaty of Madrid, to which the above- 

 quoted article is additional, " In the event of the commerce of the 

 Spanish American colonies being opened to foreign nations, his 

 Catholic majesty promises that Great Britain shall be admitted to 

 trade with those possessions, as the most favored nation." The second 

 part of the additional article is evidently intended merely in confir- 





