1834.] 
FALKLAND ISLANDS. 
511 
which would not be denied to them, since they were naembers of 
the colony." 
The ethics of the governor are singular — he takes credit to 
himself for his rigorous justice in sharing the plunder with the 
robber, and denies that the prospect of plunder was any induce- 
ment to robbery ! He denied that he practised any cruelty on the 
seaman Crawford, or that the declarations which were imputed to 
him by Captain Davison, of an intention to discriminate between 
the EngHsh and the Americans, in favour of the former, and to 
interrupt the American whale-fishery with an armed vessel. As 
to these facts, Mr. Baylies quotes his authority, and at present 
those charges are to be viewed with reference to the superior 
credibility of Vernet or Davison. With the exception of the 
three last, almost every important allegation embraced in the note 
of the twentieth of June is admitted, and extenuated in the man- 
ner as related above. 
What a picture does this governor exhibit of himself and his 
colony — a picture drawn by his own hand ! In a period of pro- 
found peace, the vessels and the property of the nation which had 
first stretched forth the hand of fellowship to the infant Argentines, 
and greeted them as equals in the family of nations, were forcibly 
seized and appropriated without legal adjudication. American 
seamen were imprisoned : shipwrecked mariners, first plundered 
of the scanty earnings of their hours of desolation, were converted 
into Argentines for the purpose of plundering their own country- 
men. Argentines and Montevideans, Germans, Old Englishmen 
and New Englanders, were conglomerated in one foul mass, and 
fashioned into a lawless colony under a reckless governor ! 
As to the remainder of Vernet's communication respecting the 
title, &c., we shall content ourselves with saying, that the govern- 
ment of Buenos Ayres must have been sadly in want of materiel 
when they fashioned this vagabond into a quasi minister of foreign 
affairs. - ^ 
There is, however, one fact mentioned in the " informe" which 
deserves a passing notice. " In eighteen hundred and twenty 
(says Vernet) the government of Buenos Ayres entered on the 
formal possession of the Malvinas (Falklands), by means of the 
Colonel of Marine, Don David Jewett :" the act was solemnized 
by a salute of cannon, &c., in presence of the officers and crews 
of several English and American vessels. From this account it 
