Doc. No. 75, 35 



in ibe thickly peopled ports of the kingdom, introduced themselves into 

 the said coast, such introduction was clandestine. As it does not appear 

 that they obtained the permission of the Spanish government of that day, 

 they thus contravened the prohibitory laws established by that govern- 

 ment, and therefore committed a crime which exposed them to the penal- 

 ties prescribed by the laws. 



If you could have proved that the commercial establishment had been 

 formed with the permission of that government, it would have given them 

 no further advantage than that of the trifling traffic which they might 

 have carried on with a horde of savages, consuming only a few of the 

 coarsest articles, and in no way did it give them the essential right of an 

 intimate alliance. According to the principles recognised by the laws of 

 nations and the usages of diplomacy, negotiations and treaties can be 

 conducted only through agents formally accredited by sovereigns; and 

 these intruding merchants were no more diplomatic agents of the British 

 government than the Mosquito chief was a sovereign. That this Indian 

 was not a sovereign you yourself admit when you say that the rights of 

 Great Britain were in the same year secured to her by a treaty with Spain, 

 signed on the 10th of July, 1670, at Madrid. The sovereignty thus 

 recognised by Great Britain over the said coast, refuted and annulled the 

 cession which, as you say, was made by the ^Mosquitos to the governor 

 of Jamaica in 1687, as well as the subsequent dispositions of the British 

 government. You thus most strangely assert that these people, consid- 

 ered as aUies of Great Britain in 1670, appear as the subjects of the 

 governor of Jamaica seventeen years afterwards — in 1687. The acts by 

 which the Mosquitos were obliged to render services, and the British 

 estabhshments and superintendent were maintained down to the year 

 1776, were therefore acts of complete usurpation. For this reason it was 

 established by the sixth article of the definitive treaty of peace between 

 the monarchs of Great Britain and Spain, in September, 1783, that — 



VI. — The intention of the two high contracting parties being to pre- 

 vent, as much as possible, all the causes of complaint and misunderstand- 

 ing heretofore occasioned by the cutting of wood for dyeing, or logwood, 

 and several English settlements having been formed and extended under 

 that pretence, upon the Spanish continent, it is expressly agreed that his 

 Britannic Majesty's subjects shall have the right of cutting, landing, and 

 carrying away logwood, in the district lying between the river Wall is, or 

 Belize, and Rio Hondo, taking the course of the said two rivers for un- 

 alterable boundaries, so as that the navigation of them be common to both 

 nations, to wit: by the river Wallis or Belize, fr^m the sea, ascending as 

 far as opposite to a lake or inlet which runs into the land and forms an 

 isthmus, or neck, with another similar inlet which comes from the side 

 of Rio Nuevo or New river; so that the line of separation shall pass 

 straight across the said isthmus, and meet another lake formed by the 

 water of Rio Nuevo, or New river, at its current. The said line shall 

 continue with the course of Rio Nuevo, descending as far as opposite 

 to a river, the source of which is marked in the map, between Rio Nuevo 

 and Rio Hondo, and which empties itself into Rio Hondo; which river 

 shall also serve as a common boundary as far as its junction with Rio 

 Hondo; and from thence descending, by Rio Hondo, to the sea, as the 

 whole is marked in the map which the plenipotentiaries of the two Crowns 

 have thought proper to make use of for ascertaining the points agreed 



