278 Doc. No. 75. 1 



London,, June 23, ISm * 



My Lord: On my return from Gaeta, I have received at this court 

 your excellency's communication dated the 26th of Aprif last, by which 

 I am informed that Sir Robert Campbell, the chairman of the committee 

 of bondholders of Central America, has applied to your excellency to 

 support them in obtaining the conclusion of an arrangement for the pay- 

 ment of the proportion allotted to the State of Nicaragua of the debt con- 

 tracted with the house of Barclay and Company, by the government of 

 Central America, and which arrangement, according your excellency^ 

 ought to have been done twenty years ago,- though I have explained to 

 the creditors the motives I have had to retard it. 



Before I received your excellency's much esteemed communication, 1 

 had addressed to the committee of bondholders the basis of an arrange- 

 ment for the payment of the part appertaining to Nicaragua, without,, 

 however, desisting from the demand for the exhibition of the documents 

 which I have solicited, and which 1 believe are necessary for the legali- 

 zation of the acknowledgment made by Mr. Zebadua, minister from 

 Central America at this court, in favor of the bondholders. 



This act, my lord, shows that this aifair is in course of arrangementf. 

 and if there have arisen any differences, it is for the interested parties to 

 settle them amicably as is usual amongst civihzed people, and in cour 

 Jfbrmity with the rules of universal justice, especially when your excel- 

 lency knows it is only in case of an absolute refusal of justice^ or of a 

 notorious injustice, when the subjects of a nation can clami the protec- 

 tion of their governments 



Her Britannic Majesty's government, who acknowledge those princi- 

 ples, will^do an act of justice to Nicaragua by declining the intervention? 

 in the present case, as the question only rests on the presentation of doc- 

 uments whose presence would very much forward its conclusion. If,, 

 from the time this formality was solicited, it had been acceded to by her 

 Majesty's agents who have been encharged to make the claim to Nica- 

 ragua, this affair might have been concluded and the bondholders reim- 

 bursed, as other creditors have been whose debts have originated from, 

 claims which force, and not justice,, has made to prevail. I am sorry 

 to have to say so, and do it against my inclination. 



As to the question, if it is just or not to require the British creditors to 

 support the rights of the State and solicit the restitution of the port of 

 San Juan, the honorablo Lord Pahiierston knows as well as 1 that the 

 law of nations approves of it; firstly, because it is one of tbe revenues 

 pledged by the government of Central America for the payment of the 

 debtj and secondly, because Nicaragua, though small and weak,, can, in 

 its capacity of a political being, employ all those means which the same 

 laws have established to obtain a reparation for an offence,, in case his 

 complaints against it have not been duly attended to. 



Respecting these two points, your excellency says that the port of San. 

 Juan could not be comprised in the hypothec, because the loan was raised 

 in 1825; and that it was not till 1836 that the government of Central 

 America took possession of it,, in opposition to the rights of the so-called 

 King of Mosquitos. On this particular, I have said to your excellency 

 all that is convenient in my despatches of the 20th of January and 5th 

 and 19th of March last, which have not yet been answered... Nevettjie- 

 less, I have- to observe to your excellency — 



