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Doc. No. 75. 



From the Secretary General of the government of Nicaragua to Prederick 

 Chatfteldj Consul General of Great Britain. 



Government House, Leon, 

 November IS, 1842. 

 Sir: Under date of the 7th instant I said to you as follows: 

 The supreme government of the State of Nicaragua has received your 

 esteemed communication of the 24th uhimo, in which you state that her 

 Britannic Majesty's government had been informed of the complaint 

 against the conduct of Colonel Macdonald, the superintendent of Belize, 

 towards the administrator, Colonel Manuel Q^uijano, at the port of San 

 Juan del Norte, in this State, and is highly satisfied to learn that, as you 

 declared verbally to the supreme director, the settlement of this affair V 

 having been intrusted to you, you had begun it by writing, inasmuch as 

 the government hopes, from the evident justice of the cause of Nicaragua, 

 that it will receive the effective satisfaction and indemnification to which 

 it is entitled. With this object, one of the supreme commissioners will 

 call on you this morning, in order to dissipate the objections which 

 you urge, in your esteemed note above mentioned, to the complaints so 

 justly advanced by this government, and to obtain from you, as the rep- 

 resentative of Great Britain in this affair, the equitable settlement of a 

 question so interesting to the maintenance of reciprocity between the two 

 nations." 



In the confidence inspired by your official communication to this 

 supreme government, that you had come expressly to treat on the affair 

 mentioned in the previous note from this department, the licentiate Pedro 

 Zeledon and Senor Gregorio Juares were appointed as commissioners to 

 develop its views and expose everything which might tend to remove 

 your obligations to the recognition of the justice of the cause of Nicaragua, 

 by a quiet and impartial examination of the question. But those commis- 

 saries have this day informed the supreme executive power that on enter- 

 ing into the business, you had assured that all you had to say was 

 expressed in your above-mentioned note of the 24th ultimo, and you had 

 thus declined to discuss the question. 



The supreme government of the State of Nicaragua, on learning from 

 you that her Britannic Majesty's government had confided to you the 

 examination of this question, was persuaded that you had instructions for 

 its settlement; and although the most expeditious means of doingso would 

 be that proposed by the commissaries, as you do not choose to discuss the 

 matter with them, I can only repeat the evidence of the positive rights of 

 this State to the satisfaction and indemnification which it has more than 

 a year since asked from her Britannic Majesty, in a statement supported 

 by documents, dated the 16th of October of last year, which is answered 

 by your assurance that you had been charged to examine and treat upon 

 this question impartially, as given in your esteemed note above mentioned. 



In that note you say nothing can be further from the desires of her 

 Majesty's government than that the proceedings of any British officer 

 should give cause of complaint to a friendly State;" and the Nicaraguan 

 government adds, that nothing should be further from the intention of 

 Queen Victoria's cabinet than to assert the right of territorial possession, 

 in favor of the Mosquitos; to the place from which Colonel Manuel Qui- 



