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IL-FOREIGN.

COPY of a NOTE addressed by the RIGHT HON. GEORGE CANNING, his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to the CHEVALIER DE LOS RIOS, Minister Plenipotentiary of his

most CATHOLIC MAJESTY.

Foreign-Office, March 25. The undersigned, his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, is commanded by his sovereign to deliver to the Chevalier De Los Rios, for the purpose of being transmitted to his court, the following reply to the official note addressed by his Excellency M. Zea to his Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires at Madrid, on the 21st of January.

So large a portion of the official note of M. Zea was founded upon a denial of the facts which had been reported to the British Government, with respect to the state of the several countries of Spanish America, and upon an anticipation of events expected by the court of Spain to take place in those countries, by which the credibility of the reports transmitted to the British Government would be effectually disproved, that it has been thought advisable to await the issue of the expected events in Spanish America rather than to confront evidence with evidence, and to discuss probabilities and conjectures. Of that decisive issue, as it appears to be, the undersigned is directed to say, that it is a great satisfaction to the British Government that it had actually taken place before the intentions of the British Government towards Spanish America were announced. Those intentions, therefore, cannot possibly have had the slightest influence upon the result of the war in Peru.

With this single observation the undersigned is directed to pass over all that part of M. Zea's note which turns upon the supposed incorrectness of the information on which the decision of the British Government was founded.

The questions which remain to be examined are, whether in treating with de facto governments, now established beyond the danger of any external assailment, Great Britain has violated either any general principle of international law, or any positive obligation of treaty.

To begin with the latter, as the most specific accusation.

M. Zea brings forward repeatedly the general charge of violated treaties; but as he specifies only two-that of 1809 and that of 1814-it may be presumed that he relies on them alone to substantiate his charge.

First as to the treaty of 1809. That treaty was made at the beginning of the Spanish struggle against France, and was directed wholly, and in terms not to be misapprehended, to the circumstances of the moment at which it was made. It was a treaty of peace, putting an end to the war in which we had been since 1804 engaged with Spain. It is expressly described in the first article as a treaty of "alliance during the war" in which we were engaged jointly with Spain against France. All the stipulations of the treaty had evident reference to the de

clared determination of the then ruler of France to uphold a branch of his own family upon the throne of Spain and of the Indies; and they undoubtedly pledged us to Spain not to lay down our arms until that design should be defeated in Spain, and the pretension altogether abandoned as to Americaa pledge which it is not, and cannot be denied that Great Britain amply redeemed. But those objects once accomplished, the stipulations of the treaty were fulfilled, and its obligations necessarily expired, together with the matter to which they related.

In effect, at the happy conclusion of the war in the Peninsula, and after the restoration, by British assistance, of his Catholic Majesty to the throne of his ancestors, the treaty of 1809 was replaced by the treaty of 1814. And what does that treaty contain? First, the expression of an earnest wish on the part of his majesty, that Spanish America may be reunited to the Spanish monarchy; and secondly, an engagement to prohibit British subjects from supplying the Spanish Americans with munitions of war. This engagement was instantly carried into effect by an order in council of 1814. And in furtherance of the like object, beyond the obligation of the treaty, an act of Parliament was passed in 1819, prohibiting the service of British subjects in the ranks of the resisting colonies. That the wish expressed in this treaty was sincere, the proof is to be found not only in the measures above-mentioned, but in the repeated offers of Great Britain to mediate between Spain and her colonies. Nor were these offers of mediation, as M. de Zea alleges, uniformly founded on the single

basis of the admission by Spain of the independence of the Spanish provinces.

Years had elapsed, and many opportunities had been missed of negotiating on better terms for Spain, before that basis was assumed to be the only one on which negotiation could be successfully opened.

It was not assumed in 1812, when our mediation was offered to the Cortes.

It was not assumed in 1815, when Spain asked our mediation, but refused to state the terms to which she was willing to agree.

It was not assumed in 1818, in the conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle, in which conferences the question of an arrangement between Spain and her Americas was for the first and last time discussed between the great powers of Europe.

After the silence, indeed, which Spain observed as to the opinion of the powers assisting at those conferences, when laid before her, two things became perfectly clear; the first, that Spain had at that time no serious intention of offering any terms such as the Spanish American provinces were likely to accept; the second, that any subsequent reference of the subject to a congress must be wholly fruitless and unsatisfactory. From that time forth, Great Britain abstained from stirring the subject of negotiation with the colonies, till, in the month of May, 1822, Spain spontaneously announced to Great Britain that she had measures in contemplation for the pacification of her Americas on a basis entirely new, which basis, however, was not explicitly described.

In answer to that notification, Spain was exhorted by Great Britain to hasten, as much as pos

sible, her negotiation with the colonies, as the course of events was evidently so rapid as not to admit of a much longer delay; but no suggestion was even then brought forward by Great Britain as to the adoption of the basis of independence.

The first suggestion of that basis came, in fact, from the government of Spain itself, in the month of November, 1822, when the British minister at Madrid received an intimation that the Cortes meditated opening negotiations with the colonies on the basis of colonial independence; negotiations which were in fact subsequently opened, and carried to a successful termination, with Buenos Ayres, though they were afterwards disavowed by his Catholic majesty.

It was not till after this lastmentioned communication from the Spanish government that Great Britain expressed the opinion which she entertained as to the hopelessness of negotiating upon any other basis than that then first suggested by the Spanish government.

This opinion stated (as has been said) in the first instance confidentially to Spain, was nearly a twelvemonth afterwards-that is to say, in the month of October, 1823-mentioned by the undersigned in a conference with the French ambassador in London, the substance of which conference was communicated to Spain and to the other powers. It was repeated and enforced in the despatch from the undersigned to sir William A'Court, in January, 1824.

Nothing, therefore, can be less exact than the supposition that Britain has uniformly put forward the basis of independence

as the sine qua non condition of her counsel ́and assistance to Spain in negotiating with her colonies.

To come now to the second charge against Great Britain-the alleged violation of general international law. Has it ever been admitted as an axiom, or ever been observed by any nation or government as a practical maxim, that no circumstances and no time should entitle a de facto government to recognition? or should entitle third powers, who may have a deep interest in defining and establishing their relations with a de facto government to do so?

Such a proceeding on the part of third powers undoubtedly does not decide the question of right against the mother country.

The Netherlands had thrown off the supremacy of Spain long before the end of the 16th century; but that supremacy was not formally renounced by Spain till the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Portugal declared in 1640 her independence of the Spanish monarchy; but it was not till 1668 that Spain by treaty acknowledged that independence.

During each of these intervals the abstract rights of Spain may be said to have remained unextinguished. But third powers did not in either of these instances wait the slow conviction of Spain, before they thought themselves warranted to establish direct relations, and even to contract intimate alliances with the republic of the United Netherlands, as well as with the new monarchy of the house of Braganza.

The separation of the Spanish colonies from Spain has been neither our work nor our wish.

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