only a disputable claim advanced, which might be peaceably and regularly decided, without insult and without force; and if the Spaniards had complained at the British court, their reasons would have been heard, and all injuries redressed; but that, by presupposing the justice of their own title, and having recourse to arms, without any previous notice or remonstrance, they had violated the peace, and insulted the British government; and therefore it was expected that satisfaction should be made by public disavowal, and immediate restitution, The answer of Grimaldi was ambiguous and cold, He did not allow that any particular orders had been given for driving the English from their settlement; but made no scruple of declaring, that such an ejection was nothing more than the settlers might have expected; and that Buccarelli had not, in his opinion, incurred any blame, as the general injunctions to the American governors were, to suffer no encroachments on the Spanish dominions. In October the prince of Masseran proposed a convention for the accommodation of differences by mutual concessions, in which the warning given to the Spaniards by Hunt should be disavowed on one side, and the violence used by Buccarelli on the other. This offer was considered as little less than a new insult, and Grimaldi was told, that injury required reparation; that when either party had suffered evident wrong, there was not the parity subsisting which is implied in conventions and contracts; that we considered ourselves as openly insulted, and demanded satisfaction plenary and unconditional. Grimaldi affected to wonder that we were not yet appeased by their concessions. They had, he said, granted all that was required; they had offered to re store the island in the state in which they found it; but he thought that they likewise might hope for some regard, and that the warning sent by Hunt would be disavowed. Mr. Harris, our minister at Madrid, insisted that the injured party had a right to unconditional reparation, and Grimaldi delayed his answer that a council might be called. In a few days orders were dispatched to prince Masseran, by which he was commissioned to declare the king of Spain's readiness to satisfy the demands of the king of England, in expectation of receiving from him reciprocal satisfaction, by the disavowal, so often required, of Hunt's warning. Finding the Spaniards disposed to make no other acknowledgments, the English ministry considered a war as not likely to be long avoided. In the latter end of November private notice was given of their danger to the merchants at Cadiz, and the officers absent from Gibraltar were remanded to their posts. Our naval force was every day increased, and we made no abatement of our original demand. The obstinacy of the Spanish court still continued, and about the end of the year all hope of reconciliation was so nearly extinguished, that Mr. Harris was directed to withdraw, with the usual forms, from his residence at Madrid. Moderation is commonly firm, and firmness is commonly successful; having not swelled our first requisition with any superfluous appendages, we had nothing to yield, we therefore only repeated our first proposition, prepared for war, though desirous of peace. About this time, as is well known, the king of France dismissed Choiseul from his employments. What effect this revolution of the French court had upon the Spanish counsels, I pretend not to be informed. Choiseul had always professed pacific dispositions, nor is it certain, however it may be suspected, that he talked in different strains to different parties. It seems to be almost the universal error of historians to suppose it politically, as it is physically true, that every effect has a proportionate cause. In the inanimate action of matter upon matter, the motion produced can be but equal to the force of the moving power; but the operations of life, whether private or public, admit no such laws. The caprices of voluntary agents laugh at calculation. It is not always that there is a strong reason for a great event. Obstinacy and flexibility, malignity and kindness, give place alternately to each other, and the reason of these vicissitudes, however important may be the consequences, often escapes the mind in which the change is made. Whether the alteration which began in January to appear in the Spanish counsels, had any other cause than conviction of the impropriety of their past conduct, and of the danger of a new war, it is not easy to decide; but they began, whatever was the reason, to relax their haughtiness, and Mr. Harris's departure was countermanded. The demands first made by England were still con tinued, and on January 22d, the prince of Masseran delivered a declaration, in which the king of Spain disavows the violent enterprise of Buccarelli, and promises to restore the port and fort called Egmont, with all the artillery and stores, according to the inventory. To this promise of restitution is subjoined that this engagement to restore Port Egmont, cannot, nor ought in any wise to affect the question of the prior right of sovereignty of the Malouine otherwise called Falkland's Islands. This concession was accepted by the earl of Roche ford, who declared on the part of his master, that the prince of Masseran being authorized by his catholic majesty to offer in his majesty's name to the king of Great Britain a satisfaction for the injury done him by dispossessing him of Port Egmont, and having signed a declaration expressing that his catholic majesty disavows the expedition against Port Egmont, and engages to restore it in the state in which it stood before the 10th of June 1770, his Britannic majesty will look upon the said declaration, together with the full performance of the engagement on the part of his catholic majesty, as a satisfaction for the injury done to the crown of Great Britain. This is all that was originally demanded. The expedition is disavowed, and the island is restored. An injury is acknowledged by the reception of lord Rochford's paper, who twice mentions the word injury and twice the word satisfaction. The Spaniards have stipulated that the grant of possession shall not preclude the question of prior right, a question which we shall probably make no haste to discuss, and a right of which no formal resignation was ever required. This reserve has supplied matter for much clamour, and perhaps the English ministry would have been better pleased had the declaration been without it. But when we have obtained all that was asked, why should we complain that we have not more? When the possession is conceded, where is the evil that the right, which that concession supposes to be merely hypothetical, is referred to the Greek calends for a future disquisition? Were the Switzers less free or less secure, because after their defection from the house of Austria they had never been declared independent before the treaty of West phalia? Is the king of France less a sovereign because the king of England partakes his title ? If sovereignty implies undisputed right, scarce any prince is a sovereign through his whole dominions; if sovereignty consists in this, that no superior is acknowledged, our king reigns at Port Egmont with sovereign authority. Almost every new acquired territory is in some degree controvertible, and till the controversy is decided, a term very difficult to be fixed, all that can be had is real possession and actual dominion. This surely is a sufficient answer to the feudal gab. ble of a man who is every day lessening that splendor of character which once illuminated the kingdom, then dazzled, and afterwards inflamed it; and for whom it will be happy if the nation shall at last dismiss him to nameless obscurity, with that equipoise of blame and praise which Corneille allows to Richlieų, a man who, I think, had much of his merit, and many of his faults. Chacun parle à son gré de ce grand Cardinal, Il m'a fait trop de bien pour en dire du mal, To push advantages too far is neither generous nor just. Had we insisted on a concession of antecedent right, it may not misbecome us, either as moralists or politicians, to consider what Grimaldi could have answered. We have already, he might say, granted you the whole effect of right, and have not denied you the name. We have not said that the right was ours before this concession, but only that what right we had, is not by this concession vacated. We have now for more than two centuries ruled large tracts of the American continent, by a claim which perhaps is valid only upon. this consideration, that no power can produce a better; |