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iDoc. No. 75 



duras, extending from Cape de Gracias, along the coast of Honduras, to 

 the mouth of the San Juan de Nicaragua river, which forms the port of 

 the same name on the Atlantic side, and as constituting an independent 

 nation, in aUiance with and under the protection of her Britannic Majesty, 

 as asserted by the British agents. 



Before Central America had pronounced its independence of the Span- 

 ish monarchy, in the years 1783 and 1786, the British government dis- 

 avowed all sovereignty on the part of the Mosquito tribe, ordered all 

 British subjects to retire from their coasts and from the whole continent, 

 and prohibited them from supplying the Indians on the frontier of the 

 Spanish provinces with arms and munitions of war. This is shown in 

 the definitive treaty of peace concluded between the two Crowns in Sep- 

 tember, 1783, and in the convention in complement of the same, con- 

 cluded at London on the 14th of July, 1786, of which an authentic copy 

 is sent with this note under the No. 1. 



These solemn recognitions of the territorial integrity of the continent, 

 made by his Britannic Majesty with respect to the old kingdom of Guate- 

 mala, were regulated according to the claim of his Catholic Majesty to 

 those countries by the laws of the Indies; and this same settlement of 

 boundaries was confirmed by the Spanish constitution in 1812. Prom 

 this reason it was, that whilst Central America remained in the posses- 

 sion of Spain, British subjects were silent as to territorial pretensions in 

 favor of the Mosquito Indians. But after the declaration of independence 

 of Central America in 1821, (and although the Federal constitution of 

 1824, and the fundamental laws of Nicaragua in 1826 and 1838, had 

 adopted the same boundaries of the old kingdom of Guatemala,) the English 

 revived their projects of appropriating that part of the north coast of these 

 States to themselves; and in 1842, Mr. Frederick Chatfield, her Britannic 

 ^ Majesty's consul general, pretended to extend territorial rights of the 

 Mosquitos from the cape above named to the south bank of the San Juan, 

 at its entrance into the Atlantic, as may be seen by the annexed docu- 

 ments No. 2. 



Since 1842 the said consul general of her Britannic Majesty had left 

 unanswered the reply given by this government, on the 19th of Novem- 

 ber of the same year, against his territorial pretensions in favor of the 

 Mosquitos; nor was any answer given to the complaint and protest ad- 

 dressed by our minister plenipotentiary at the courts of the Tuileries and 

 others to all the cabinets mentioned in the accompanying document, and 

 of which the minister plenipotentiary of your respectable nation acknow- 

 ledged the receipt, in a letter also annexed; until at length the British 

 consul, in his letter of the 10th of September last, gave notice to this gov- 

 ernment that her Britannic Majesty, the ally and protectress of the king- 

 dom and King of the Mosquitos, had formed the opinion that the said 

 territory extends from Cape de Gracias to the mouth of the San Juan, on 

 the Atlantic; and that she would afford them her protection against any 

 attack which might be made on them from the States of Honduras and 

 Nicaragua. 



From that moment my government knew that neither disunion nor any 

 other pacific means of international law, nor justice, were to be employed; 

 but that force would be used to wrest from Nicaragua a property possessed 

 from time immemorial, as the port of San Juan on the north had been; 



