Doc. No. 75. 



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a5 from the Spanish possessions; and the British government fur- 

 ther engaged that British subjects so withdrawn and confined to the ceded 

 district in Honduras should, in their communications from thence with the 

 ceded territories, conform to such regulations as to custom duties as the 

 Spanish government might think proper to establish among its own sub- 

 jects. 



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 teirritory 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 frontiers except the two oceans; and yet^ 

 by article 14 of the treaty of 1786, the British government engages not to 

 allow Brtish subjects to furnish arms or warlike stores to the Indians in 

 general situated u I fon the frontiers of the Spanish possessions; and by the 

 immediately preceding mention of the Mosquitos in the very same sen- 

 tence, it is sufficiently clear that they were intended to be included among 

 the number of Indians situated upon the frontiers of the Spanish posses- 

 sions. But 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 war- 

 like stores could be furnished. 



It is plain, thererore, that the treaty of 1786 proves that the Mosquitos 

 were considered by the contracting parties as a nation separate and inde- 

 pendent, and were not acknowledged by Great Britain as belonging to 

 Spain. 



But that treaty also proves that Great Britain still shelterd the Mosqui- 

 tos 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 re- 

 taliate upon the people of Mosquito, on account of the co-operation and 

 assistance which the Mosquitos had afforded to the British in the hostili- 

 ties 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 v/ould that have been to Nicaragua? or how could a conven- 

 tion which was res inter alias acta, have had any bearing whatever upon 

 the rights and 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 

 the opposite affirmative. Having shown that Nicaragua has no claim 

 whatever to the Mosquito territory ; it would seem unnecessary for my 



