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been both present and prospective, but on this point there may be room for an honest doubt. Moreover, it is only just to Great Britain to say that she offered to submit the question to arbitration and the United States would not consent to it.

V

THE CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY (CONCLUDED) BELIZE, OR BRITISH HONDURAS. THE BAY ISLANDS

Belize, or British Honduras

The country now known as British Honduras was discovered by Columbus in 1502.1 The first recorded mention of a settlement at the place now occupied by its capital, Belize, was made in 1638, when a few mariners and adventurers established themselves there.2 In 1696 a horde of English pirates took possession of the present Island of Carmen in the Laguno de Términos. Though driven from it by the Spaniards in 1717, they retained a foothold on the coast and penetrated to the vicinity of the Rio Hondo. The rancheria which they formed took the name of Walix or Belice, after their captain whose name was Wallace. They were dislodged by the Spanish governor in 1733 but immediately returned, retook the place, and remained thus established upon

1 An account of the British Settlement of Honduras by Captain Henderson.

2 Bulletin of Am. Geog. Soc., XXXII, No. 4, 1900, p. 331 et seq.

what was then part of the Spanish-American province of Mexico.1 The British settlement of Belize was recognized by Spain in the treaty concluded with Great Britain in 1763, as an establishment for "cutting, loading, and carrying away logwood." In this treaty it was provided that all fortifications which British subjects might have erected "in the Bay of Honduras and other places of the Territory of Spain in that part of the world" should be demolished, within a period of four months; but prescribed no limits, either as to territory or as to governmental power, for the settlements. The friction and controversy that came from this omission it was sought to obviate by the treaty of 1783. In this pact the settlement was defined by metes and bounds. The northern line was described as the Rio Hondo and the southern as the Rio Belize, but these limits were not respected by the settlers. Rather than fight over their infraction, Spain agreed to their extension. By the treaty of 1786 the settlement was enlarged by expansion southward to the Rio Sibun, the boundary between Mexico and Guatemala.2 The occupation of the settlers was given greater scope. From cutting wood for dyeing it was extended to "cutting all other wood, without

1 Diccionario-enciclopédico hispano-americano by Montauer and Simon.

2 The boundary was at this time and for years afterwards undefined, but seems to have been eventually defined by a preponderance of authority, as the line of the Sibun,

even excepting mahogany, as well as gathering all the fruits of the earth, purely natural and uncultivated." According to the eighth article of the treaty, the settlers were to husband the wood so as to make the supply inexhaustible or, failing to do this, they were, upon its exhaustion, to vacate the settlement or to supply themselves by purchase from inhabitants of the surrounding country. The treaty prohibited the establishment of plantations or factories or any form of government, except "such regulations as their Britannic and Catholic Majesties might see fit to establish for the maintenance of peace and order among their respective subjects." The sovereignty of the country was expressly reserved to Spain.

By 1821, when the Central American States achieved their independence, the settlers in the Belize, having failed to husband the wood as contemplated in the treaty of 1786, had exhausted the supply. Instead of applying for a new grant or vacating the settlement or supplying themselves by purchase from the surrounding country, as required by the treaty, they spread across the Sibun, establishing themselves and plying their trade, as far south as the Rio Sarstoon in Guatemala.

The rights of Spain in Mexico descended, through the revolution of that dependency, upon the independent State which Mexico became. In

1826 England acquired by treaty with Mexico the same rights from that republic as she had previously acquired from Spain, and no more.1 This treaty (1826) covered her Belize settlement from the Rio Hondo to the Rio Sibun; in other words her legitimate settlement, which was in Mexico. It did not affect her settlement from the Sibun to the Sarstoon; in other words her squatter settlement, which lay in Guatemala.

On the 14th of August, 1834, the Government of Guatemala granted a charter to a British corporation: "The Eastern Coast of Central America Commercial and Agricultural Company," for the purpose of colonization. The land assigned to it was the department of Vera Paz, part of which constituted the region between the Sibun and the Sarstoon invaded by the settlers from Belize. When the authorities of Belize learned of this grant they declared that this region was within their jurisdiction as their property and they refused to give any of it up to the claimants under the Guatemala grant.

1 J. M. Clayton, Sen. Speech, Jan. 16, 1854. About two years later our secretary of state wrote as follows: "It is the indisputable fact that England possesses no other treaty rights at the Belize, except the usufruct conceded by Spain, and which as late as the year 1826, the British government deemed it important to have confirmed by England [sic] by the Mexican republic, as the presumed sovereign at that time, of the country in which the settlement of the Belize exists.

"It is understood that Guatemala contests the claim of the Mexican republic in this respect; and it may be that the precise limits of the two republics on that side are undetermined."

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