1834.] 
FALKLAND ISLANDS. 
501 
with garrisons and colonies, would Ferdinand VII., King of 
Buenos Ayres, have declared war against Ferdinand VII., King 
of Spain and the Indies, for an invasion of sovereignty and juris- 
diction ? And would Buenos Ayres, like the long parHament of 
England, have fought against the king in the name of the king ? 
The charge also contended, that if it were admitted that the 
sovereign rights of Spain were vested in the ancient viceroy alty 
of Rio de la Plata, by virtue of the revolution of May twenty- 
fifth, eighteen hundred and ten, those rights could not have been 
vested in the Argentine Repubhc, because thatrepubUc constituted 
only one of the four nations into which the viceroyalty was di- 
vided, and could not show the releases of the others; and that 
the Oriental Republic of Yruquay, commonly called the Banda 
Oriental, Paraguay, and Bolivia, all independent nations, had 
equal rights to the possession of the islands in question with the 
Argentine Republic. The charge might have pushed the argu- 
ment on this ground still further : there is no Argentine. Republic : 
a number of provinces, once connected by a very feeble and im- 
perfect tie, assumed that name, and did, for a short period, ac- 
knowledge a common government ; but that confederation was 
dissolved, and each province became independent : before the 
dissolution, however, a quasi power to manage the foreign rela- 
tions was conferred on Buenos Ayres; but the other provinces 
regard no stipulations with foreign nations, made by Buenos 
Ayres, as obhgatory on them, unless they are pleased to make 
them so. Between these provinces, being twelve or fifteen in 
number, there is no existing political dependant connexion ; and 
they are all independent nations, with all the attributes of sov- 
ereignty ; and each one as much entitled to the possession of the 
Falklands and the adjacent islands as Buenos Ayres : and yet, in 
fact, Buenos Ayres is the only party in interest ; and on this mere 
fragment of a right, according to their own showing, have all these 
overweening pretensions to sovereign power, over islands distant 
a thousand miles from their continental possessions, been set up. 
Mr. Baylies asks " if the Argentine Republic, claiming no ori- 
ginal title or rights but such only as were derivative from Spain, 
could assume any higher title than that which Spain assumed ; 
and Spain certainly never assumed any right to capture or 
detain American vessels or American citizens engaged in the 
