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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 373: TREATIES WITH FRANCE AND SPAIN.
By Edward Farr
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The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

TREATIES WITH FRANCE AND SPAIN.

In the month of September his majesty appointed a new committee of council, for the consideration of all matters relating to trade and plantations, of which board Mr. Charles Jenkinson, now created Lord Hawkesbury, was appointed president. Under the auspices of this commission, a treaty of commerce was signed between the courts of England and France, on the 29 th of September, on the principle of admitting the commodities of each country to be freely exported and imported at a low ad valorem duty. The chief negociator of this treaty was Mr. Eden, afterwards Baron Auckland, who, under the coalition administration, had filled the office of vice-treasurer of Ireland. This was the first memorable defection from that inauspicious alliance, and it was considered the more so because Mr. Eden was considered its original projector.

About the same time a convention was signed with Spain, which terminated the long-subsisting disputes respecting the British settlements on the Mosquito shore and the Bay of Honduras. By this treaty the Mosquito settlements were formally relinquished; and, in return, the boundaries of those on the coast and Bay of Honduras were somewhat extended. In a political point of view this convention answered a valuable purpose, by removing a source of national disputes; but it is to be regretted that the claims of humanity and justice were overlooked. The Mosquito settlers, who amounted to many hundred families, and who had from time immemorial occupied their lands, under British protection, were ordered to evacuate the country in eighteen months; nothing further being stipulated in their favour, than that the king of Spain should “order his governors to grant to the said settlers all possible facilities for their removal to the settlements agreed on by the present convention.” In all measures for the public good, the rights of private individuals should be regarded, but, by this treaty, they were manifestly sacrificed.