Les travaux zélés et assidus de la Commission chargée de la rédaction de la Législation Nationale, me mettront à même d'en présenter de nouveau à votre Assemblée des parties importantes.

Quelques autres objets encore occuperont Vos Nobles Puissances, pendant cette Session. Je l'ouvre dans ce moment avec la perspective et dans la confiance qu'elle servira non moins que les précédentes, à augmenter le bien-être de l'Etat. J'éprouve un sentiment bien vif de satisfaction, en voyant le Trône des Pays-Bas entouré de plus en plus de l'amour et de la confiance de nos Compatriotes. Ainsi secondés, Nobles et Puissans Seigneurs, nos efforts réunis ne peuvent manquer, sous la protection Divine et en continuant de jouir du bienfait de la paix, d'atteindre leur but-la prospérité de la Patrie.

NOTE of Mr. Secretary Canning to the Chevalier de Los Rios, relative to Spanish America.

Foreign Office, March 25, 1825.

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 several of the 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 issue, decisive as it appears to be, the Undersigned is directed to say no more than that it is a great satisfaction to the British Government that it had actually taken place before the intentions of the British Government towards the other Countries of Spanish America were announced. Those intentions, therefore, cannot by possibility 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 more specific accusation:

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

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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 declared 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 America-a 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 re-united 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 become 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 possible, 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 Catholick Majesty.

It was not till after this last-mentioned 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 other Powers. It was repeated and enforced in the Despatch from the Undersigned to Sir Wm. à Court, in January, 1824.

Nothing, therefore, can be less exact than the supposition, that Great Britain has uniformly put forward the Basis of Independence, as

the sine qua non condition of her counsel and assistance to Spain, in negotiation 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 Sixteenth 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 Republick 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. Events, in which the British Government had no participation, decided that separation,-a separation, which, we are still of opinion, might have been averted, if our counsels had been listened to in time. But, out of that separation, grew a state of things, to which it was the duty of the British Government (in proportion as it became the plain and legitimate interest of the Nation whose welfare is committed to its charge) to conform its measures, as well as language, not hastily and precipitately, but with due deliberation and circumspection.

To continue to call that a Possession of Spain, in which all Spanish occupation and power had been actually extinguished and effaced, could render no practical service to the Mother Country ;—but it would have risked the Peace of the World. For all political Communities are responsible to other Political Communities for their conduct,-that is, they are bound to perform the ordinary international duties, and to afford redress for any violation of the Rights of others by their Citizens or Subjects.

Now, either the Mother Country must have continued responsible for acts, over which it could no longer exercise the shadow of a control; or the inhabitants of those Countries, whose independent political

existence was, in fact, established, but to whom the acknowledgment of that Independence was denied, must have been placed in a situation in which they were either wholly irresponsible for all their actions, or were to be visited, for such of those actions as might furnish ground of complaint to other Nations, with the punishment due to Pirates and Outlaws.

If the former of these alternatives,-the total irresponsibility of unrecognised States,-be too absurd to be maintained; and if the latter,the treatment of their inhabitants as pirates and outlaws,―be too monstrous to be applied, for an indefinite length of time, to a large portion of the habitable globe :-no other choice remained for Great Britain, or for any Country having intercourse with the Spanish American Provinces, but to recognise, in due time, their political existence as States, and thus to bring them within the pale of those rights and duties, which civilized Nations are bound mutually to respect, and are entitled reciprocally to claim from each other.

The example of the late Revolution in France, and of the ultimate happy restoration of His Majesty Louis XVIII, is pleaded by M. Zea in illustration of the principle of unextinguishable right in a legitimate Sovereign and of the respect to which that right is entitled from all Foreign Powers; and he calls upon Great Britain, in justice to Her own consistency, to act with the same reserve towards the New States of Spanish America, which She employed, so much to Her honour, towards Revolutionary France.

But can M. Zea need to be reminded, that every Power in Europe, and specifically Spain amongst the foremost, not only acknowledged the several successive Governments, de facto, by which the House of Bourbon was first expelled from the Throne of France, and afterwards kept for near a Quarter of a Century out of possession of it, but contracted intimate alliances with them all; and above all, with that which M. Zea justly describes as the strongest of de facto Governments, -the Government of Bonaparte; against whom, not any principle of respect for the rights of Legitimate Monarchy, but his own ungovernable ambition, finally brought combined Europe into the field?

There is no use in endeavouring to give a specious colouring to facts which are now the property of history.

The Undersigned is, therefore, compelled to add, that Great Britain herself cannot justly accept the praise which M. Zea is willing to ascribe to Her in this respect, nor can She claim to be altogether exempted from the general charge of having treated with the Powers of the French Revolution.

It is true, indeed, that up to the year 1796, she abstained from treating with revolutionary France, long after other Powers of Europe had set her the example. But the reasons alleged in Parliament, and in State Papers, for that abstinence, was the unsettled state of the [1824-25.] 3 N