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flow can it be shown that those rights have devolved to Nicaragua? Has 

 Spain ever conveyed such rights to Nicaragua by treaty? Certainly not. 

 Has Nicaragua obtained them by conquest? Equally not. The people 

 of Nicaragua revolted, indeed, against the King of Spain, and established 

 by force of arms, and de facto^ their practical independence, which, 

 however, I believe, has not up to this day been formally and diplomati- 

 cally acknowledged by Spain. But the successful revolt of the people 

 of Nicaragua could give them no right with reference to Spain, except 

 the right of self government. The very principle upon which their re- 

 volt was founded, and which the success of that revolt established, goes 

 to forbid them from practising towards other nations that kind of oppres- 

 sion from which they had freed themselves. The fact of their having 

 thrown off the yoke of Spain could give them no right to impose their 

 yoke upon the people of Mosquito. The circumstance that they had 

 succeeded in asserting their own freedom from foreign rule could give 

 them no right to impose their rule upon a people who had always been 

 free; and it is a well known historical fact that the Mosquito nation had 

 from time immemorial, and up to the period of the revolt of Nicaragua, been 

 as free as they had continued to be from that period to the present day. But 

 -even supposing that this had not been so, and that the (Jrown of Spain 

 had possessed rights of sovereignty over the Mosquito territory: th€ 

 /people of Nicaragua might just as well claim a derivative right from 

 Spain to govern and to be masters of Mexico, New Grenada, or any other 

 of the neighboring States of Central America, as to govern and possess 

 by such derivative rights the Mosquito territory, which was never pos- 

 sessed or occupied by the people of Nicaragua. The people of each of 

 the revolted districts of the Spanish American provinces established 

 their own independence, and their own right of self government, within 

 the territory which they actually occupied, but nothing more. If these 

 revolted provinces had imagined that they acquu'ed by their revolt all the 

 rights of Spain, besides determining among each other in what manner 

 those rights were to be apportioned between them, they must also by ne- 

 cessity have considered themselves bound to all the obhgations of Spain. 

 But they neither acknowledge these obligations, nor were called upon by 

 x>ther countries to adopt them; on the contrary, wheti their pohtical ex- 

 istence as independent States was acknowledged by foreign countries, 

 they contracted severally with those foreign countries such new treaties 

 as were applicable to their own respective geographical limits and politi- 

 cal conditions; and neither they , nor the foreign powers with which they 

 treated, ever thought of considering them as inheritors of any rights or 

 vobligatioMS arising out of the treaty engagements of the Spanish Crown. 

 Moreover, if Spam possessed any rights over the Mosquito territories, and 

 if those rights have descended by inheritance to any of the Spanish 

 American republics, it would remain to be proved that such rights have 

 devolved upon Nicaragua rather than upon Honduras, Costa Rica, or New 

 Grenada; and it is probable that each and all of those three States would 

 establish just as good a claim as Nicaragua, and probably a better one, to 

 the inheritance, if any such rights had existed. But I deny totally and 

 entirely that Spain had any right to the Mosquito territory, and I there- 

 fore contend that there is no inheritance whatever in this respect which 

 can become the subject-matter of dispute. On the contrary, the King of 

 the Mosquitos has^ ifrom an early period of the history of America, been an 



