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engagement of withdrawing British subjects from the Mosquito territory 

 as vjell as from the Spanish possessions; and the British government 

 farther engaged that British subjects so withdrawn , and confined to the 

 ceded district in Honduras, should, in their communications from thence 

 with tlie Spanish territories, conform to mch regulations y as to custom 

 duties, as the Spanish government might think proper to establish among 

 its own subjects. 



The manner in which the Mosquito territory is, in the convention of 

 1786, contradistinguished from the possessions of Spain, which alone had 

 been mentioned in the treaty of 1783, clearly proves that, by the under- 

 standing of both parties, the Mosquito territory and the possessions of 

 Spain were separate and different things. 



But any pretension of Spain to right over the Mosquito territory, of 

 which she had no possession, could only be founded upon a general 

 claim of sovereignty over the whole of that central part of the American 

 continent. But if that claim existed^ Spain could not have acknowledged 

 that she had in that part of America any frontier except the two oceans, 

 and yet, by article 14 of the treaty of 1786, the British government 

 engages not to allow British subjects to furnish arms or warlike stores to 

 the Indians ia general situated upon the frontiers of the Spanish posses- 

 sio7is; and, by the immediately-preceding mention of the Mosquitos, in 

 the very same sentence, it is sufficiently clear that they were intended to 

 be included among the number of Indians situated upon the frontiers of 

 the Spanish possessions. Bat if Mosquito had belonged to Spain, the 

 Spanish possessions in that quarter would have had no frontier except the 

 tide line of the ocean, and upon such a frontier no Indians could dwell, 

 to whom arms and warlike stores could be furnished. It is plain, there- 

 fore, that the treaty of 1786 proves that the Mosqaitos were considered by 

 the contracting parties as a nation separate and independent, and were 

 not acknowledged by Great Britain as belonging to Spain. 



Bat that treaty also proves that Great Britain still sheltered the Mosquitos 

 under her protection; for, while the British government engaged for fiscal 

 reasons to withdraw from Mosquito those British subjects whose presence 

 therein, being a visible symbol of the protectorship of Great Britain, would 

 secure the Mosquitos from any act of hostility on the part of the Spaniards, 

 the British government exacted from the government of Spain, as an 

 equivalent security for Mosquito, an engagement not to retaliate upon the 

 people of Mosquito on account of the co-operation and assistance which 

 the Mosquitos had afforded to the British in the hostilities which had 

 taken place between Great Britain and Spain before the peace of 1783. 

 This stipulation was a substantial and effectual act of protectorship on 

 the part of Great Britain, acquiesced in, and subscribed to, by Spain. 



It is demonstrable, therefore, that the convention of 1786' did not in- 

 validate either the independence of Mosquito or the protectorship of Great 

 Britain; but, if it had invalidated both, as between Great Britain and 

 Spain, what would that have been to Nicaragua? or how could a conven- 

 tion which was ^^res%7ittr alios acta'''' have had any bearing whatever 

 upon the rights or pretensions of Nicaragua? 



I might well content myself to close here my answer to your notes; and 

 having proved a negative, I might abstain from going into a proof of op- 

 posite affirmative. Having shown that Nicaragua has no claim whatever 

 to the Mosquito territory, it would seem unnecessary for my argument with 



