1834.] 
FALKLAND ISLANDS. 
493 
mander is dead, and he bore to his grave the scars of wounds 
which were received in fighting the battles of his country : — that 
country must honour his memory, unless his fame has been tar- 
nished by his memorable transactions at the Falkland Islands. 
What he did there has been related already : — he resorted to force, 
and it remains to be seen whether the circumstances would war- 
rant its application. 
Louis Vernet, by virtue of the decree of June tenth, eighteen 
hundred and twenty-nine, claimed the right of capturing Ameri- 
can vessels engaged in the fisheries at the Falkland Islands and 
their adjacencies. He did capture such vessels, and discovered 
in his proceedings more of the character of a pirate than of a 
high officer of a regular government, by disposing of their cargoes 
without adjudication, and imprisoning and maltreating the seamen. 
Previous to his interference, we had been accustomed to use the 
waters there for the purposes of fishery as freely as the waters on 
our own coasts. The decree under which he pretended to act,, 
and from which he derived his authority, had never been commu- 
nicated or made known to the American government or their rep- 
resentative at Buenos Ayres. It was issued by a government, de- 
nominated by the existing government, a mutiny. A government 
never acknowledged by them to be legitimate, — not existing ac- 
cording to constitutional forms or popular election, but usurped in 
a military sedition, which was signalized by the murder of the 
chief magistrate of the republic: resisted in arms from its com- 
mencement : the resistance continued until it was overthrown, and 
all its acts declared void by a decree, signed by Governor Rosas 
himself, and the very persons whose names were affixed to the 
decree of the tenth of June had been banished as political male- 
factors. The government, in their correspondence with the consulj. 
had evaded the avowal of Vernet as their officer : the capture of 
the Harriet they had denominated "an affair of a private litigious 
nature,"' as " a private contentious affair ;" and no presumptions 
arising from the circumstances could have warranted a belief that 
the captures were authorized originally by them. On his arrival 
at the islands. Captain Duncan found none of the outward marks 
which indicate sovereign jurisdiction : none of the badges and 
emblems of national authority : neither soldiers, flags, fortresses, 
nor national vessels. The colony was composed of brermans, 
