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For spoliations committed on the commerce of The United States, under the sanction of that Paper Interdiction, restitution will be required and to the dignity which characterizes the Government of the Republick, is Spain indebted for that magnanimous forbearance from reprisal, justifiable on every principle of self-preservation and defence. The Citizens of The United States, from the peaceful aud neutral course prescribed by their Government, are justly entitled to the respect of the Belligerent Parties, and if their enterprize induces them to reap the advantages of a lawful Trade within Territories alternately in the occupancy of either, they are there as Citizens of a truly Neutral Power-a Power that has at no time afforded aid, or exercised influence of any kind, in the present unhappy and calamitous conflict.

Between The United States and the Sovereign of Spain there exists a Treaty, recently made, and consecrated by the most formal observances, the acknowledged basis of which is good will and a cordial spirit of conciliation. How, then, in the face of this pledge of concord, do you, Sir, undertake to threaten with forfeitures and ignominious penalties-with slavery and death-the Citizens of a Republick, who have a right to expect under this token of friendship, safety and exemption from molestation ?

Wrongs and injuries that may accrue to Citizens of the Union from your unlawful Decrees, whether visited on their Persons or Property, will be numbered with the catalogue of outrages already sustained, and for which Spain must be accountable. Against all such wrongs and injuries I protest, and do hereby solemnly call upon your Excellency to abstain from the adoption of measures fraught with most evil consequences-measures coercing a spirit of retaliation and reaction, the end and issue of which may be conceived, foreseen, and prevented, by your Excellency. And I invite your Excellency, as a lover of the character and honour of Spain, of the amity and good faith so happily preserved between her and the Republick, to annul all such restrictions as lead to a violation of the Laws of Nations-as infringe the just Rights of Citizens of The United States-as deprive them of the benefits of Peace, and tend to augment to an alarming amount the account which hereafter must inevitably be balanced between the two Nations. I have the honour to be, &e. ROBERT TREAT SPENCE.

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H. E. General Morales.

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(4).-Protest of the Admiral, and Commander in Chief of the Britis Naval Forces, in the West Indies, &c.

SIR,

H. B. M. Ship Sybille, Port Royal Harbour, Jamaica, Dec. 5, 1822. I HAVE received your Excellency's Dispatch of the 10th October, with a Copy of your Proclamation, upon reducing the Province of

Maracaibo:

Against your right of declaring Ports and Coasts in a state of Blockade, without the means of enforcing it by Vessels of War, it is my duty to protest, and I now do so, as I before did to Field Marshal Don Miguel de la Torre, in a Letter, of which the inclosed is a Copy, and which, I presume, was delivered to you upon succeeding to the Command of the Spanish Army on the Main.

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The Law of Nations, as therein asserted, has been recognised by the Government of His Britannick Majesty, as also, by the other European Powers, and it behoves your Excellency to be cautious how you violate it. Should you do so, by seizing British Vessels, which have not acted contrary to any known Law, but taken merely on the plea of breaking your supposed Blockade, which Blockade I declare to be illegal, I shall immediately reclaim them, with compensation for any loss or damage they may sustain in consequence thereof; and if that be denied, I shall be under the necessity of directing them to be retaken by force, if necessary, and the Vessel of War by which they may have been molested, to be brought into Port Royal, where she will be detained until satisfaction be rendered for the outrage.

The feelings of surprise and indignation which the barbarity and wanton cruelty of the language of your Proclamation are calculated to excite are not to be expressed; but I shall not suffer it to be given to the World without protesting against it, and denying the existence of any circumstances which can justify it.

That a few peaceable Men, opening and carrying on a trade with the Inhabitants of South America, can militate against the Sovereignty and legitimate rights of the Spanish Nation-sully the purity or invade the sanctity of your Holy Religion-or destroy the honest and virtuous customs heretofore existing in that Continent, as you say they do, is difficult to conceive, and as you offer no experience to prove that it is so, I can only consider your assertions as a necessary prelude to the sanguinary Edicts which immediately follow them.

That Foreigners found in the Military Service of the Republick of Colombia, or having a share in a Printing-office, or Editors of any Journals, &c, by means of which the publick mind may be agitated, either with reference to War or Religion, are responsible Persons, is not denied; though I protest against its being the Law of civilised warfare to subject Persons of this description to death, in the summary manner your Proclamation decrees; but that those found in any branch of the Administration of the Republick, or in any manner have done that which is offensive to the Spanish Nation, to its Government, or Subjects, should be made liable to the same severity of punishment, is a most cruel and arbitrary decree; and I do therefore protest against it, as relates to the Subjects of His Britannick Majesty.

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That Foreigners found in the Country, not coming within the foregoing descriptions, but who went to it whilst in possession of the

Independents, should be condemned to labour at the Publick Works, as decreed in the second Article of your Proclamation, is an unheardof barbarous threat, unparalleled in the Wars of Civilized Nations, and such as, I am convinced, Spain cannot authorise; I therefore consider myself bound to protest, in the strongest manner, against its being acted upon towards British Subjects.

The term of 8 days granted to the Foreigners at Maracaibo, whose lives were spared, was much too short for mercantile Men to arrange their accounts; and as their stay could not have interfered with your future operations, because they might have been placed under surveillance, this time appears unnecessarily confined and arbitrary.

As I find that your Excellency, after assuring the Officer who waited upon you from His Britannick Majesty's Sloop Surinam, that British property should be respected, and repeating the same in your letters to me, has condemned the whole of it, upon the ground that its coming to Maracaibo was in violation of your Blockade, I demand its immediate restitution; because, for the reasons before stated, it has been unlawfully seized; and I likewise do the same with reference to British Property which may fall into your hands in your progress through other Provinces.

It is proper to inform your Excellency, that the Lieutenant Governor of this Island joins with me in the sentiments I have expressed, and his Honour would have conveyed the same to you from under his own hand, had you made known to him the Proclamation herein noticed.

Captain Rowley, the bearer of this Dispatch, will afford your Excellency an opportunity of returning any British Property that may have been seized at Maracaibo under a false impression. I have the honour, &c.

His Excellency Don F. T. Morales.

C. ROWLEY.

(Enclosure.)-Rear Admiral Rowley to Field Marshal La Torre. H. B. M. Ship Serapis, Port Royal Harbour,

SIR,

Jamaica, August 21, 1821.

I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Excellency's Communication of the 6th of June, which reached me on the 21st of last month, informing me that you had considered it your duty to direct that all the Ports and Coasts belonging to the Provinces of Maracaibo, Coro and Barcelona, should be under blockade; and convey. ing to me this intelligence with a view to its general publicity, that no English Subject might risk his property by a contravention thereof.

Against this Blockade it is my duty to protest; as I consider the Law of Nations to be, that the legality of a Blockade must essentially depend upon the adequacy of the blockading force, to hold the Ports

and Coasts intended to be blockaded, in such a constant state of Blockade, that no Vessel can enter or depart without imminent danger of detention; that, if the force is inadequate to enforce the Blockade generally, the whole Blockade in all its parts is thereby vitiated; nor can the blockading Ships enforce it partially where they may happen to be present.

With this view of the Blockade which your Excellency has declared, I must warn you of the consequences that may follow from your attempting to apply to the Ships and Property of His Britannick Majesty's Subjects, a restraint not warranted by the Law of Nations, under the pretext of Blockade. I have, &c.

H. E. Field Marshal Don M. de la Torre. Maracaibo.

C. ROWLEY.

PROCLAMATION of the Emperor of Brazil to the People of Portugal, on his elevation to that dignity.-21st October, 1822. (Translation.)

PORTUGUESE! The greatest force is insufficient against the will of a People determined to live no longer in a state of slavery. The history of the World has confirmed this truth, and it is further confirmed by the rapid events which have occurred in this vast Empire, which, deceived by the flattering promises of the Congress at Lisbon, the falsehood of which soon appeared, was betrayed in its most sacred rights and most obvious interests, and had presented to it only the prospect of re-colonization; and of legal despotism, a thousand times more tyrannical than the arbitrary acts of a single Despot. The great and generous Brazilian People have been successively influenced by unbounded credulity, justifiable distrust, and mortal hatred, and have finally come to the firm resolution of establishing a Legislative Assembly of their own, from whose wisdom and prudence the new social Compact which is to govern the Country shall emanate, and that Assembly is about to commence its glorious task: the same great and generous People have unanimously chosen me for their Perpetual Defender; an honourable charge which I have proudly accepted, and which I am determined to execute even to the sacrifice of my life.

This first step, which ought to have opened the eyes of the Congress of Lisbon to the abyss into which the whole Nation was about to be precipitated, which ought to have rendered it more circumspect in its conduct, and more just in its acts, has only served to inflame the corroding passions of the Demagogues, who, to your shame, are seated in the august sanctuary of the Laws. All measures tending to retain Brazil under the iron yoke of slavery have obtained the approbation of that Congress. It decreed troops for the purpose of conquering

Brazil, under the frivolous pretext of suppressing factions. The Brazilian Deputies were publickly insulted, and their lives threatened. The Senhor, Don John VI., my August Father, has been compelled to descend from the high dignity of a Constitutional Monarch, owing to the severe captivity in which he is held, and to act the part of a mere publisher of the delirious Decrees of his corrupt Ministers, or of the factious Members of the Congress, whose names will be handed down with their crimes to the execration of posterity: and I, the Heir to the Throne, have been held up to scorn, and abused by the very persons who ought to teach the People to respect me, in order that they might themselves be respected.

Under such critical circumstances, the heroic People of Brazil, finding all means of conciliation exhausted, availed themselves of a right, the possession of which no one can dispute. On the 12th of the present month, they proclaimed me their Constitutional Emperor, and declared their own Independence. By this solemn Act, an end has been put to the distrust and suspicion of the Brazilians of the plans of dominion contemplated by the Lisbon Congress; and the uninterrupted series of monuments placed in the path of eternal time, to record to this People their past misfortunes, now only serve to convince them how far Brazil would have been advanced in prosperity, if at an earlier period she had been separated from Portugal; if her good sense and reason had sanctioned sooner a separation made by

nature.

Such is the state of Brazil. Though from the 12th of this month Brazil no longer forms an integral part of the ancient Portuguese Monarchy, still nothing prevents the continuation of their ancient commercial relations, as I have declared in my Decree of the 1st of August last, provided Portugal do not send more Troops to invade any of the Provinces of this Empire.

Portuguese! I offer you the space of 4 months to make your decision. Decide, and chose, either the continuance of a Friendship, founded on the dictates of justice and generosity, and in the ties of blood and reciprocal interests, or a most violent War, which can alene terminate in the recognition of the Independence of Brazil, or in the ruin of both Countries. THE EMPEROR

Palace of Rio de Janeiro, October 21, 1822.

PROCLAMATION of the Emperor of Brazil, recalling Brazilians from Foreign Countries.-8 January, 1823. BRAZILIANS!

(Translation.) As soon as the Independence of Brazil had been proclaimed throughout this vast Empire, and the sincere wishes and affection of its generous Inhabitants had raised me to the Constitutional Throne of

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