109. Instructions to Mr Forsyth on the Spanish Treaty of Indemnity of 1819.

Extract.

Washington, 1819. The treaty of amity, settlement and limits, between the United States and Spain, concluded on the 22d ultimo, and ratified on the part of the United States, having provided for the adjustment of all important subjects of difference between the two nations, the first object of your mission will be to obtain the ratification of the Spanish government, and receive it in exchange for ours, the authentic instrument of which is committed to your charge.

On exchanging the ratifications, certificates of the fact will be mutually executed and delivered by you and the Spanish minister, with whom you will make the exchange. Copies of that, which passed in both languages on the exchange of the ratifications of the convention of the 11th August 1802, are now furnished you, and will serve as forms to be used in the performance of this ceremony. On this occasion, as upon all others, upon which you may have occasion to execute any document, joint, or reciprocal, with a foreign minister of state, you will be careful to preserve the right of the United States to the alternative of being first named, and your own right, as their representative, to sign first in the papers executed; while, in the counterparts, the other contracting party will be named first, and the foreign minister will first sign and seal. A rigid adherence to this practice has become necessary, because it is strictly adhered to by all the European sovereigns in their compacts with one another; and because the United States having, heretofore, forborne to claim this conyentional indication of equal dignity, some appearance of a disposition to allege the precedent against them, as affecting their right to it, was manifested by the British plenipotentiaries on executing the convention of 3d July 1815, and M. de Onis at the drawing up and signing of this treaty.—The scruple was, however, in both cases abandoned, and the right of the United States to the alternative was conceded. It is not expected that it will, hereafter, be questioned, and you will consider it as a standing instruction to abide by it in the execution of any instrument of compact, which, as a public minister of of the United States, you may be called to sign.

After the exchange of the ratifications, your attention will be directed to the object of carrying the provisions of the treaty into effect. The orders for the evacuation by the Spanish officers and troops of the places, occupied by them in the Floridas, will, no doubt, be immediately issued, and as the transports and escort for conveying to the Havana are to be furnished by the United States, it is hoped you will obtain copies of the orders and transmit them here with the ratification of the treaty. You will think it advisable to keep the Spanish government reminded of the necessity to include the orders for the delivery of possession, that of all the archives and documents, relating to the dominion and sovereignty. The appointment of a commissioner and surveyor for running the line of the western boundary must, also, be kept in rememberance, and notice given to us, as soon as possible, after their appointment. You will collect from the archives of the lega tion at Madrid all the documents, relating to the claims of citizens of the United States upon the Spanish government, which have been deposited there, and which come within the description of claims to be exhibited to the commissioners under the 11th ar icle of the treaty. You will send all these documents, together with

the ratified treaty, to this department, retaining descriptive lists of them, and, if necessary, copies of such papers, for which no equivalent substitute could be produced in case of their being lost. Should you have reason to believe that any documents, which you should be able to specify, were in possession of the Spanish government, tending to elucidate any of these claims, you will endeavour to obtain them. The treaty provides, that they shall be furnished at the demand of the commissioners. But as much time may be saved, if they can be sent here to be ready when the commission will be organized and commence the exercise of its functions, you will, should the occasion present itself, use your endeavours to that effect." 110. Nesselrode to Mr Poletica, Russian Minister in the U. States, 1819.

Extract.

You doubtless have been able to obtain information, how far the president's last instructions to Mr. Forsyth were positive. The emperor will not now take it upon him to justify Spain, but he charges you to plead with the government at Washington the cause of peace and concord. That government is too enlightened to take hasty steps, and its rights appear to be too solid, not to be weakened by a violent course of proceeding: and on the other hand, such is the character of the considerations, which command the ratification by Spain of the arrangement, relative to the Floridas, that, it is hoped, she will, at length, yield to the force of evidence. The United States will then have added to the reputation of an able, that of a moderate policy, and will gather with security, the fruits of wisdom.

His Imperial Majesty, therefore, wishes that if there be yet time, you would engage the government at Washington to give to the Spanish ministry a proof of patience, which its circumstances might indeed seem to suggest. Nevertheless, the emperor does not interpose in this discussion. He makes, above all, no pretension to exercise an influence in the councils of a foreign power. He merely expresses a wish, dictated by his concern for the general welfare, and worthy of the generous, good faith, which characterises the government of the United States."

111. The treaty of Feb. 22, 1819, was signed, after a succession of negociations of nearly twenty year's duration, in which all the causes of difference between the two nations had been thoroughly discussed, and with a final admission on the part of Spain, that there were existing just claims on her government, at least, to the amount of five millions of dollars, due to citizens of the United States, and for the payment of which provision was made by the treaty. It was signed by a minister, who had been several years residing in the United States, in constant and unremitted exertions to maintain the interests and pretensions of Spain, involved in the negociation-signed, after producing a full power, by which in terms, as solemn and as sacred as the hand of a sovereign can subscribe, his Catholic Majesty had promised to approve, ratify and fulfil whatever should be stipulated and signed by him.". "The express authority of two of the most eminent writers upon national law to this point were cited in Mr Forsyth's letter of 2d October 1819, to the duke of San Fernando. The words of Vattel are, But to refuse with honour to ratify that, which has been concluded in virtue of a full power, the sovereign must have strong and solid reasons for it, and particularly he must show, that that his minister transcended his instructions.' The words of Martens are, 'Every

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thing, that has been stipulated by an agent, in conformity to his full powers, ought to become obligatory for the state from the moment of his signing, without ever waiting for the ratification.'

"However, not to expose the state to errors of a single person it is now become a general maxim, that public conventions do not become obligatory, until ratified. The motive of this custom clearly proves, that the ratification can never be refused with justice, except when he, who is charged with the negotiation, keeping within the extent of his full public powers, has gone beyond his secret instructions, and, consequently, rendered himself liable to punishment, or when the other party refuses to ratify."- "After a lapse of more than a month from the time of Mr Forsyth's first note, and of more than two months from the time, when the Spanish government had received the treaty, with knowledge that it had been ratified by the United States, the ratification of a treaty, which his Catholic Majesty had solemnly promised, (so that it might be exchanged within six months from the date of its signature, or sooner if possible) was withheld merely to give time to his Catholic Majesty to examine it; and this treaty was the result of a twenty years' negotiation, in which every article and subject, contained in it, had been debated and sifted to the utmost satiety between the parties, both at Washington and Madrid-a treaty in which the stipulations by the Spanish minister had been sanctioned by successive references of every point to his own government, and were, by the formal admission of your own note, fully within the compass of his instructions.

"If, under the feeling of such a procedure on the part of the Spanish government, the minister of the United States appealed to the just rights of his country in expressions, suited more to his sense of its wrongs, than to the courtesies of European diplomacy, nothing had till then occurred, which could have restrained the Spanish government from asking of him any explanation, which could be necessary for fixing its determination upon the ratification."

112. Mr Russell to the Count d'Engerstroem on the Swedish Claims.

Extract.

June, 1818. None of the nations, whose dominions border on the Baltic, ever committed, in relation to the United States, nor it is believed in relation to other friendly nations, any act similar to that, for which the undersigned has been instructed to ask indemnity from Sweden. Of the conduct of Russia and Prussia during the continental system the United States has no cause to complain, and if Denmark imposed a sequestration towards the close of the year 1809, on American vessels and their cargoes in her ports, that sequestration continued for a few months only, and the American property, subjected to it, was restored, without exception, to the lawful owners. If the United States have now claims on Denmark, it is for the lawless depredations of her privateers and the unjust decision of her tribunals, and not for the confiscation without the form of a trial of property, acknowledged to be American, and fairly and regularly entered at her custom houses. Of all the nations, bordering on the Baltic, it was left for Sweden, alone, to receive the duties, and summarily and peremptorily to confiscate the merchandise without suggesting a doubt of its origin or ownership."—" The Swedish government, forgetting its previous assurances and disregarding the incontrovertible rights of the

United States and the friendly relations, which had not ceased to subsist between the two countries, advertised that property for sale at Stralsund on the 2d day of August 1811, actually sold it on the 14th day of the same month, and caused the proceeds thereof to be paid into the Swedish royal treasury in Pomerania. These facts, it is believed, will not be contested, for they are supported by documents of acknowledged authenticity. Between the 12th July 1811, the day on which this property was placed at the disposal of the Swedish government, and the second day of the following month, on which it was advertised for sale there elapsed twenty one days only, a period barely sufficient for deciding on the royal order at Stockholm and for its transmission to Stralsund, and for the preparation and publication of the advertisment. The undersigned is ignorant of the date of that order, but from the considerations, just suggested, it could not well have been issued at a latter day than the twentieth of the same month of July, and consequently not more than eight days after the note of the Baron Alquier had announced the complete liberation, on the part of France, of the sequestered property. Whatever might have been the extravagance and versatility of the predominant despotism of the time it will not be presumed, that the government of the United States will volunteer a belief of a total change of policy in so brief a period, and if instead of consenting to raise the sequester as so formally and recently announced, it had been capriciously resolved to proceed to immediate confication. His Excellency must be aware, that the precise orders, received from the French government during that period, should be produced, and communicated to the American government to obtain its faith in the existence of an inconsistency in its nature so incredible. But neither his Excellency or any other Swedish functionary has attempted to show that any such orders were so received, and the undersigned will now dare to trouble his Excellency with proof, not mere presumptively that they are not. A declaration of the Swedish authorities in Pomerania renders it certain that they, at least, acted in complete igorance of such orders, as well as all French interference on the occasion, and in the full conviction, that the Swedish government at Stockholm had the exclusive control of the transaction. This declaration is contained in reply of those authorities, on the 9th of August 1811, to a memorial, presented to them on the 6th of that month by certain merchants of Stralsund, on behalf of themselves and of their American constituents. This reply clearly manifest the opinion, which the Swedish Regency in Pomerania entertained of the justice of the object of the memorial, and of the competency of their Sovereign to decide definitively in relation to it. It is, likewise, evident from their engagement to place provisionally the proceeds of the merchandise, claimed in the royal chamber, that they acted independently of all French interference, and that there was no agent of France in their vincinity, whom they felt themselves obliged to consult, or to obey in this proceeding."

[These acts were never denied by Sweden, but an attempt was made to throw a different hue over them.]

"It is an undisputed fact that the American vessels in question entered the ports of Pomerania, whilst that province was still under the dominion of Sweden, but scarcely was the French government informed of it, when it gave orders to its agents in Pomerania to demand the seizure and confiscation of these vessels to the

benefit of France, alleging, in justification of this violent pretension, the system, called continental, under which France then cloaked her projects of progressive encroachment, menacing all Europe, but which had notwithstanding been acceded to by all European powers at peace with the French empire. The imposing force, at that time kept up by France in those countries, left no alternative to the Swedish government, which was reluctantly compelled to acquiesce in her demands. The steps then taken by Sweden with the French government, to obtain a transfer to her of the property, thus confiscated, were prompted by a desire to restore it to the lawful owners, but they proved ineffectual, France, having agreed to transfer on certain conditions only, expressly stipulating, that the proceeds of these cargoes should be immediately employed in placing Pomerania in a state of defence against the English naval force, which then threatened all the shores of the Baltic."

113. Mr Russell to the Secretary of State.

Extract.

Agreeably to the invitation, above mentioned, I dined yesterday, with the King at his country palace of Rosendale. Immediately after dinner, he desired me and Count d'Engerstroem to accompany him into his private apartments. He there, at once, introduced the subject of the claims, and expressed a regret that all the circumstances, connected with that transaction, had not hitherto been communicated to the American government. He observed that these circumstances, he believed, would palliate, if not justify the conduct of Sweden in that transaction, and that they should be immediately addressed to me. He then gave directions to Count d'Engerstroem in conformity with this declaration, and, in doing so, he alluded to an order of the French government, designating the objects to which the proceeds of the American property were to be applied. He added, that he was still disposed to do all he could for the relief of the American sufferers, but that, as he had nothing excepting military stores at his disposal for this object, he could furnish this relief in articles of that description only. I simply replied, that we could not have expected, that new facts would have been brought forward at this late day, after the earnest manner in which we had so long urged these claims, and that I could hardly believe, I might say hope, that these facts were of a nature to justify the Swedish government and exempt it from all responsibility. I was, however, entirely disposed to give to these facts, whatever they might be, a candid consideration."

[The Claims on Sweden were closed by a private agreement.]

114. Mr G. W. Erving to M. de Rosenkrantz-Danish Claims. Convoy Cases. Copenhagen, June 7, 1811.

[Extract.] With my note of yesterday, I transmitted to your excellency a list of the 'convoy cases," twelve in number; the two last in that list are now depending on appeal before the high court, as is mentioned in a memorandum opposite to their names; the first eight vessels of the remaining ten were bound immediately from Petersburg and Cronstadt to the United States; they had all paid their sound dues, and several of them had been examined before the Danish marine tribunals, on entering the Baltic; and they were all arrested, in going out, by a British force. and compelled to join convoy. When that convoy was attacked by his Majesty's gun brigs, the Americans, not conscious of any illegality in the nature of their