1834.] FALKLAND ISLANDS. 503 
garded it, and relied on her prior rights alone in her subsequent 
controversy with Great Britain. 
On the tenth of June, seventeen hundred and seventy, the 
British were dispossessed by a Spanish force, when their title had 
been placed on the triple ground of prior discovery, formal pos- 
session, and actual occupation ; and the islands being uninhabited, 
there was no aboriginal title to be extinguished. 
The act of dispossession was disavowed by Spain, and the 
islands restored. Great Britain resumed possession, and then vol- 
untarily abandoned the islands ; but avers that she did not relin- 
quish them. ' 
" It is true (says Mr. Baylies) that many years have elapsed, 
since, under these circumstances, she ceased to occupy the Falk- 
land Islands : but the lapse of time cannot prevent her from re- 
suming possession, if her own maxim of law be well founded, 
nullum tempus occurit re^i"— and that she persisted in her claim 
was evident, from the protest of November, eighteen hundred and 
twenty-nine, a copy of which had been communicated to him 
officially by his excellency Henry S. Fox, her minister near that 
government. Mr. Bayhes thought this protest must have been 
overlooked, when Don Tomas Manuel de Ancherona, the former 
minister of foreign affairs, had asserted, in his correspondence 
with the American consul, that, until then, nobody had questioned 
the rights of the Argentine Republic ; for he had in his possession 
a copy of the official acknowledgment of its receipt, also com- 
municated to him officially by the British envoy. 
We have always thought that it was a silly and unfounded 
censure cast upon our charg6, in the government newspapers of 
Buenos Ayres, for this expose of the British title. He stated 
nothing, as we can perceive, but historical facts, of such notoriety 
that no British statesman could have been presumed to be igno- 
rant of them. It seems his object was to persuade the govern- 
ment of Buenos Ayres, that their title to the Falklands was not 
so indubitable as they supposed, for the purpose of inducing them 
to relinquish the high ground which they had taken agamst his 
country, and therefore he gave them a view of the strength of 
the British title ; and they, in their wisdom, instead of placmg his 
argument with the British protest in the secret places of their 
archives, thought proper to publish it; and then, through the me- 
