Doc. No. 75. 



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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 ther practi- 

 cal independence, which, however. I believe, has not up to this day been 

 formally and diplomatically 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 revolt was founded, and v/hich the success of that revolt es- 

 tablished, goes to forbid them from practising towards other nations that 

 kind of oppression from which they had forced 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 al- 

 ways 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 have continued to be from that period to 

 the present day. But even supposing that this had not been so, and 

 that the Crown of Spain had possessed rights of sovereignty over the 

 Mosquito territory; the people of Nicaragua might just as well claim a de- 

 rivative right from Spain to govern and be masters of Mexico, New Gre- 

 nada, or any of the neighboring States of Central America, as to govern 

 and possess by such derivative right the Mosquito territory, which was 

 never possessed or occupied by the people of Nicaragua. The people of 

 each of the revolted districts of the Spanish American provinces estab- 

 lished 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 acquired by their re- 

 volt 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 necessity, have considered themselves bound by all the ob- 

 ligations of Spain. But they neither acknowledged these obligations, 

 nor were called upon by other countries to adopt them. On the contrary, 

 when their political existence as independent States was acknowledged 

 by foreign countries, the}^ contracted severally with those foreign coun- 

 tries such new treaties as were applicable to their own respective geo- 

 graphical limits and political condition; and neither they nor the foreign 

 power with which they treated ever thought of considering them as in- 

 heritors of any rights or obligations arising out of the treaty engagements 

 of the Spanish Crown. 



Moreover, if Spain possessed any rights over the Mosquito territory, 

 and if these 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 of any such rights, if such rights had existed. 



But I deny totally and entirely that Spain had any right to the Mos- 

 quito territory; and I therefore contend that there is no inheritance what- 

 ever, in this respect, which can become the subject-matter of dispute. 

 On the contrary, the King- of the Mosquitos has from a very early period 

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