Doc. No. 75. 



above mentioned. We never had any business there. ''^ * * * If 

 (he adds) treaties are to be considered as at all binding, it is quite clear that 

 we have not the right; nor even the permission, of residence on the Mos- 

 quito shore; and that we cut logwood and mahogany on the shores of 

 Honduras only by sufferance." 



The treaty of 1786 was confirmed by the additional article to that of 

 the 5th July, 1814, signed at Madrid on the 2Sth of August, in that year. 



No further disputes between Great Britain and Spain, respecting the 

 territory in question, appear to have arisen prior to the formation of the 

 confederacy of Central America, in 1828. The constitution of that con- 

 federacy^ published to the world in that year, in its fifth article declares: 

 ^'^ The territory of the republic is the same which formerly comprehended 

 the ancient kingdom of Guatemala, with the exception for the present of 

 the province of Chiapas." 



Under this constitution the confederacy was acknowledged by other 

 powers. Great Britain herself acknowledged its independence, received 

 from it a minister plenipotentiary, and has had a consul-general residing 

 at Guatemala for a number of years. 



The department is informed that in the course of the negotiations at 

 Bogota, which resulted in the treaty between Great Britain and Colombia, 

 of 1825, the British commissioners presented a counter- project of a con- 

 vention^ which, besides the articles ultimately concluded and signed;, 

 contained another separate and additional article, relative to the British 

 setdements at Belize, which was literally as follows: 



Separate article. — The subjects of his Britannic Majesty shall, for no 

 motive or pretext whatever, be disturbed or molested in the pacific posses- 

 sion and exercise of whatsoever rights, privileges, and immunities they 

 now enjoy, or may have hitherto at any time enjoyed, within the limits 

 described and laid down in a convention between his said Majesty and 

 the King of Spain, signed on the 14th of July, 1786, whether those 

 rights, privileges, and nnmunities are derived from the said convention, 

 or from any other concession which may at any time have been made by 

 the King of Spain or his predecessors to British subjects and settlers re- 

 siding and following their lawful occupations within the limits aforesaid." 



This is important, as showing that the obligations of the treaty of 1786 

 were recognised by the British government as recently as 1825. 



If the mere fact that Spain or Nicaragua was, at some period, not in 

 actual possession of the Mosquito territory, could have authorized England 

 to seize it or hold it, in right of the Mosquito King, then England has^, on 

 a memorable occasion, been strangely unmindful of the novel principle 

 thus asserted. 



The well known case of the island of Fernando Po, on the coast of 

 Africa, is strikingly illustrative of the views contended for on our part, in 

 this instruction. This island was discovered by the Portuguese, who 

 ceded it to Spain in ] 778. The latter power never settled or otherwise 

 occupied it, and it remained in the possession of the native negroes until 

 1828, when the British government proposed to make it the seat of the 

 mixed commission on the slave trade. They occupied it, appointed a 

 governor for it, and held it by various pretences, till the Spanish gov- 

 ernment required an acknowledgment of its right of dominion. This 

 right was finally and fully admitted in a letter of the Earl of Aberdeen to 

 Mr. Bosanquet; the British charge d'affaires at Madrid; under date the 



