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would add a chapter on the nature and influence of Christian charity considered in itself. As this publication now appears, it offers to our notice only the external machinery of party warfare, the prudential management of intellectual contests, and the advantages arising from a skilful adaptation of our conduct to the feelings and principles of others. We have no wish to discredit this kind of management, and what we have already said will be the proof of it. But there is a principle which, previously formed in the heart, will tend to produce all the benefits here so circumstantially described as resulting from personal discretion. This is Charity. From the love of God properly flows the love of our neighbour; and from genuine Christian charity will proceed the most temperate, and, on the whole, the most skilful mode of managing whatever discussions may arise on matters of religion.'

ART. VIII.—A Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, including the Territory of Poyais, descriptive of the Country; with some Information as to its Productions, the best Mode of Culture, &c. chiefly intended for the Use of Settlers. By Thomas Strangeways, K.G.C. Captain First Poyer Native Regiment, and Aide-de-Camp to His Highness Gregor, Cazique of Poyais. Edinburgh. 1822.

"THE earth has bubbles, as the water has,

And these are of them!'

But even the South-Sea bubble, pregnant as it was with mischief, was substantial compared to the bubbles at present floating around us, and which, each in its turn, will in due time burst, and leave not u wreck behind. That so many sober-minded and sensible people should become dupes to such wild and hopeless speculations and barefaced frauds, as are every day practised upon them, is to us, at least, wholly unaccountable, unless they have suddenly become converts to the soundness of that axiom of our political economists, that money is not wealth.' Every day. and every hour we hear of some new loan coming into the market-Spanish-Columbian-Chili-Peruvian-no matter what; indeed it would not greatly surprize us, if the Patagonians should condescend to apply for some of our money on the guarantee of the territory of Terra del Fuego, and the sea-calves of New Shetland; or if the Eskimaux of Barrow's Strait should propose a loan on the credit of tolls to be collected from the North-West Passage.

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The last, and not the least modest, attempt to raise the wind,' is that of the gull-catchers from the Mosquito shore, who

have made their appearance in the market under the twofold cha racter of loan-jobbers and land-jobbers; holding forth the seducing temptations of high interest for the one, and low prices for the other-interest, we suspect, without principal-and prices without commodities. The ready money price, and there is no other, is but four shillings an acre; and, as the whole disposable territory consists only of 50,000,000 acres, (about seventy-six thousand square miles,) what a bait is here held forth for the Rothschilds and the Maberleys, or any other ambitious Jews or jobbers, to become, not only immense land-proprietors, but powerful sovereigns, for the trifling sum of eight or ten millions sterling!

Our readers will, no doubt, be desirous of knowing whereabouts, on the surface of the wide world, these said seventysix thousand square miles, which constitute the territory of Poyais, may be situated-where all manner of grain grows without sowing, and the most delicious fruits without planting; where cows and horses support themselves, and where, like another blessed country on the same continent, roasted pigs run about with forks in their backs, crying, 'come, eat me! We must inform them then, that Poyais is a paltry town' of huts and log-houses, belonging to Spain, in the territory of Honduras, a province of Mexico, and situated on the Black River, sixty miles inland, and nearly south from Cape Camaron, both of which will be found on the maps in about 16° lat. in that part of North America usually known by the name of the Mosquito shore -a word, however, so ominous, that His Highness the Cazique (of whom hereafter) thinks it prudent to sink it, or to mention it only under the diluted name of Mosquitia.

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Now as the whole of the Mosquito shore, and Honduras, and the town' of Poyais, have for many centuries belonged to Spain, and been considered as constituent portions of the kingdom of Mexico, not one foot of which was ever held by the English, except occasionally, during a war, by the Buccaneers, or more recently by the logwood-cutters, we apprehend that the settlers,' if any such egregious simpletons should be found, will be considered by the Mexicans, or the Spaniards, as trespassers, and treated accordingly; and that the piece of parchment, so neatly and mathematically marked out into squares of one mile, or 640 acres, each, to be seen at the Land-Office, No. 1, Dowgate-hill,' will be nearly the whole of the promised land of which they will ever obtain quiet possession.

In order to prevent, as far as lies in our power, the further sacrifice of these luckless victims to credulity, we think it right to state briefly, from the several treaties with Spain, the relation

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in which Great Britain stands with regard to the territories in question. First then, by the treaty concluded the 3d September, 1783, at Versailles, His Catholic Majesty agrees that His Britannic Majesty's subjects shall have the right of cutting, loading, and carrying away logwood in the district lying between the rivers Wallis, or Bellize, and Rio-Hondo; and from the sea as far inward as the New-river Lake; within which boundaries the logwood-cutters are allowed, without interruption, to build houses and magazines necessary for themselves, their families, and their effects,' provided, however, that these stipulations shall not be considered as derogating in any wise from his Catholic Majesty's rights of sovereignty.' It is also stipulated, in the same treaty, that if any fortifications should actually have been heretofore erected within the limits marked out, His Britannic Majesty shall cause them all to be forthwith demolished; and to order his subjects not to build any new ones.' These limits, by a convention between Great Britain and Spain, signed at London the 14th July, 1786, are somewhat extended, and permission given to cut mahogany as well as logwood, and to gather the fruits or produce of the earth purely natural or uncultivated;' but it is expressly agreed, that this stipulation is never to be used as a pretext for establishing in that country any plantation of sugar, coffee, cocoa,' &c. . . . . . 'since-all the lands in question, being indubitably acknowledged to belong, of right, to the crown of Spain, no settlements of that kind, or the population which would follow, can be allowed.'

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It is true, the limits marked out for the logwood cutters are nearly two degrees to the northward of the Poyais and the Mosquito territory; but, in the same convention, His Britannic Majesty agrees that his subjects, and other colonists, who had hitherto enjoyed the protection of England, shall evacuate the country of the Mosquitos, as well as the continent in general, and the islands adjacent, without exception.' And His Catholic Majesty, prompted solely by motives of humanity, promises to the King of England, that he will not exercise any act of severity against the Mosquitos, on account of the connections which may have subsisted between the said Indians and the English."

Nothing can more clearly establish the sole right of Spain to these territories, than the treaty and convention above mentioned. We never had any business there. The simple fact is, that the Mosquito Indians have always borne an inveterate dislike to the Spaniards. The Duke of Albemarle, when governor of Jamaica, fostered this dislike, and invested one of the Indians with a commission as chief of the Mosquitos under the protec

tion of England; a foolish ceremony, which was exercised long after by his successors, just as we now make King Toms and King Jacks among the Negroes of Western Africa: but if treaties are to be considered as at all binding, it is quite clear that we have not the right, nor even the permission, of residence on the Mosquito shore, and that we cut logwood and mahogany on the shores of Honduras bay only by sufferance. It cannot, therefore, be expected that government ever will or can interfere in behalf of those who, in evil hour, may look to those territories, supposing (which yet we can scarcely credit) that, whilst we have so many unpeopled colonies of our own, possessing a fine climate and affording the means of a comfortable subsistencemen should be found weak enough to place themselves and their families at the mercy of a powerful tribe of capricious Indians, and within the vortex of a turbulent and revolutionary government, at war with the mother-country.

The Poyais bubble is however systematically conducted. First, the sale of lands is advertised; then a loan is required; and finally a book is published to bolster up the two former processes, and to induce subscribers' to come forward by 'directing the attention of the agriculturists of Europe to the numerous advantages which may be enjoyed in this rich country'-by' assisting the first settlers,' and forwarding the great and good object contemplated.' The projectors, however, have employed a very awkward personage to perform this last part of the delusion. Who Thomas Strangeways, K. G. C.' (Knight of the GullCatchers) may be, we neither know nor desire to know; but if, as he tells us, a portion of his life has been spent in this fine country,' we can only say that, within the covers of his Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, &c. there will not be found a single particle respecting it, which bears the slightest testimony of his having ever set foot on it; in fact, he has gutted and garbled Bryan Edward's Account of the West India Islands, and Browne's History of Jamaica, and transplanted, word for word, the whole produce of these islands into the Poyais, or rather into his pages-nay, he has even carried off the late Mr. Rennie's sugar mills from Jamaica, and placed them where no sugar mill has yet made its appearance.

One piece of information, however, the book does contain, of inconceivable importance, and in such haste is the writer to communicate it, that it is stuffed into the preface. It is this, that the Cazique of Poyais' is no less a personage than His Highness, the Macgregor, of the Clan Alpin, directly descended from the ancient kings of Scotland'! and, that we may shortly expect a Memoir containing a brief sketch of His Highness's life.'-Laud we the gods!-His Highness, it seems, is

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at present in Europe, 'procuring religious and moral instructors, implements of husbandry, and persons to guide and assist in the cultivation of the soil;' and we learn with inexpressible satisfaction, that he told the Poyais at parting, (with an evident triumph over the caveat of Doctor Caius,) none but the honest man and the industrious should find an asylum in their closet· we beg pardon-in their territory.' We take leave to suggest to his Highness whether it might not tend to the furtherance of his grand object, if overtures of an honourable nature were made by him to her Royal Highness the Princess Olive,' whose 'moral and religious' tendencies have never been disputed, and whose other qualifications would come materially in aid of his

own.

Our readers may recollect that a person of the Rob Roy family (who did not possess all the qualities of that freebooter) made a prodigious splutter in the character of a patriot, on the Spanish main, a few years ago-his name, we think, was Gregor, or Macgregor, or Gregor Mac Gregor-who, being taken by surprize, jumped out of a window, with his purse in his hand, leaving his breeches behind him. Whether His Highness, the Cazique,' be the same person, or a branch of the same stock, we shall probably not know for certain, until the Memoir of the Macgregor of the Clan Alpin,' makes its appearance from the pen of Thomas Strangeways, K. G. C.'

After all, we have, perhaps, been contending with shadows, and the 'lands' and the loan' and the Macgregor' (notwithstanding the fierce portrait as a frontispiece) are non-entities, and the whole affair merely, what is vulgarly called, a hoax-if, however, they are realities, we think the proper authorities would do well not only to disavow all sanction of such pernicious fooleries, but to put an instant stop to them.

ART. IX.-1. Further Papers relating to the Slave-Trade. Nos. III. and IV. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed. 1821, 1822.

2. Sixteenth Report of the Directors of the African Institution, read at the Annual Meeting, held on the 10th day of May,

1822.

IT

T will deeply be regretted by all whose feelings are alive to suffering humanity, that the two further Numbers (III. and IV.) of the Parliamentary Papers, and the Sixteenth Report of the Afri can Institution, forbid the indulgence of any sanguine hope, that the execrable

VOL. XXVIII. NO. LV.

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