180 



Doe. No. 7o« 



In testimony of which, we, the respective commissioners, have signed 

 and sealed the present contract in triphcate, in the city of Leon, in the' 

 State of Nicaragua, the twenty seventh day of Angnst^ in the year of ouf 

 Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine. 



HERMEN'A ZEPIDA. [l. s.] 

 GREGORIO JUARES. [l. s.] 

 DAVID L. WHITE. [l. s.] 



B. 



Foreign Office, July 16, 1849. 



Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter which 

 you addressed to me on the 23d ultimo, in reply to my letter of the 27th 

 of April, relative to the debt due by tlie State of Nicaragua to certain 

 British subjects, holders of bonds of that State. 



As the question whether the State of Nicaragua has a right to include 

 amongst those branches of her revenue which are pledged for the pay- 

 ment of that debt custom duties to be levied at the port of Greytovvn, or, 

 in other words, the question as to the validity of the alleged right of 

 Nicaragua to the port of Grey town, forms the essential point of your 

 letter now under consideration, as well as in your preceding letter of 

 20th of January, and of the 5th and 19th of March last, I will address 

 myself at once to that question. 



In your letter of the 23d ultimo, you say that by the arguments therein 

 employed you have shown: first, that the port of Greytown is now de 

 jure the property of the State of Nicaragua, and has been so ever since 

 Central America declared itself independent of Sppin; secondi^r, that there- 

 fore the revenue of customs levied at that port is justly to be included in 

 those revenues of the State of Nicaragua which are pledged for the re- 

 demption of the loan which was contracted for in 1826, by the republic of 

 Central America, with the house of Barclay and Company ; and thirdly, that 

 the British creditors are bound to assist the government of Nicaragua in 

 establishing its claim to Greytown; and that if they do not do so, they 

 must submit to the loss which may result from their own laches until 

 the port, which you say is unjustly withheld by Great Britain, shall have 

 been restored to Nicaragua. 



Upon these propositions I am prepared to join issue with you, and will 

 proceed to show that the port of Greytown does not belong and never 

 has rightfully belonged to the State of Nicaragua. This point once de- 

 monstrated, the second and third propositions, which you deduce from 

 the alleged rights of Nicaragua to Greytown^ must of course^ and neces- 

 sarily, fall to the ground. 



Now, in the first place, I have to remark that since the people of Nica- 

 ragua have never occupied any part of the territory of Mosquito, except 

 Greytown, which they forcibly took possession of only in 1836, the sole 

 pretence upon which the State of Nicaragua can claim a right to Grey- 

 town, or to any other part of the Mosquito territory, is the allegation that 

 the Mosquito territory belonged to Spain, and that Nicaragua has inherited 

 the rights of Spain over that territory. But assuming for the present, for 

 the sake of argument; that Spain had rights over the Mosquito territory^ 



