288 Doc. No. 75. 



labors. I absented myself on the 6th of April, and up to that date 1 did 

 not receive any answer. Nevertheless, I sent from Gaeta on the 22d of 

 May the basis for an arrangement, with the condition that before signing 

 any convention they would satisfy the demands I had made in my former 

 despatches. But the committee, in the meanwhile, liad sent the aifair in 

 question to the ministry; and Lord Palmerston, in consequence, addressed 

 me on the 26th of the same month (April) a communication, in which he 

 tells me that he has read the documents presented to him by the commit- 

 tee, imploring the interference of his ministry, and that he was sorry to 

 see that this important part of the mission intrusted to me was not yet 

 satisfactorily concluded; that it appears to him that I have not alleged in 

 support of my demands sufficient reasons to justify me in further postpon- 

 ing an arrangement which ought to have been made twenty years ago; 

 that the creditors were already borne out in stating that all that could be 

 reasonably expected from them to prove that their bonds were authentic, 

 was to exhibit them when the interest becomes due; and that respecting 

 Greytown, (name given to San Juan de Nicaragua,) he had to refer me to 

 his despatch of the 17th of February, in which he had informed me that 

 her Majesty's government, however desirous they were to cultivate with 

 Nicaragua the most friendly relations, could do nothing that might be 

 interpreted as admitting a doubt that Greytown belonged exclusively to 

 the Mosquito territory, and that for this reason it was a matter in regard 

 to which the bondholders could not exercise any influence in the deter- 

 mination of her Majesty's government, adding that it could not be deemed 

 just that the payment of interest due to the British subjects should be 

 made to depend on the conclusion of a question that the Nicaraguan gov- 

 ernment had raised in opposition to the right of the King of the Mosqui- 

 tos; that as for the hypothec, he had to observe that the loan was raised 

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

 attempted the usurpation of that harbor, and established a custom-house 

 there. The answer I gave on the 23d of June to this unexpected com- 

 munication, was to say — 



First. That I decline his intervention in this question with the credit- 

 ors, as they were the only proper persons to propose and adopt any means 

 for its termination; expressing, at the same time, that if the creditors had 

 complied with the just demand of Nicaragua since the commencement of 

 the question, they might have been reimbursed of their money, as other 

 creditors have been whose debts have originated from claims supported 

 by the British arms, and not by justice. 



Secondly. I reproduced all I had alleged, to prove that San Juan 

 de Nicaragua (not Greytown) has belonged to this State since it was 

 opened in 1796, when the government of her Britannic Majesty re- 

 nounced the pretension of protecting the Mosquitos in the article of the 



treaty in 1783, and in the of the convention of 1786; that it was 



rehabilitated in 1824 by a decree of the general government, ratified by 

 the Congress in 1825, and comprised in the hypothec made to the house 

 of Messrs. Barclay and Company for the security of the loan raised in 

 1826, at which time the republic had accredited a minister to this coast, 

 not only to solicit the recognizance of it and the territorial limits de- 

 signed by its constitution, but also to claim Belize as being part of Cen- 

 tral America, which was soon accorded by King George^ with the condi- 



