"You remember that Hume, in commencing his history of England by the Roman conquest says—"that without seeking any more justifiable reasons of hostility than were employed by the later Europeans in subjecting the Africans and the Americans, they sent over an army under the command of Plautius, an able general, who gained some victories, and made a considerable progress in subduing the inhabitants." Then, no European has ever had any better right to take possession of America, than Julius Cæsar and the Romans had to take possession of the island of Britain.
"What then was the right either of France or Spain to the possession of the province of Texas? To come to any question of right between the parties upon the subject you must agree upon certain conventional principles: where and when your question of right must become applicable to the facts; and, as between them, it was a disputed question, and had been so from the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi river by La Salle, and from his second expedition to find the mouth of the Mississippi coming from the ocean, in which he perished.
"Spain had prior claims to the country, but the claim of France was founded upon the last voyage of La Salle, and by extending a supposed derivative right, from the spot where La Salle landed half way to the nearest Spanish settlement.
"Mr. Monroe and Mr. Charles Pinckney, in their correspondence with Cevallos, assumed this as a settled principle between European nations, in the discussion of right to American territory. It was not contested, but was not assented to on the part of Spain; and, having found it laid down by Messieurs Monroe and Pinckney, I argued upon it, and it was never directly answered by Don Luis De Onis, who could not controvert it without going to the Pope's Bull.[89]
"As between France and Spain therefore, I maintained that the question of right, had always been disputed and never was settled, from which opinion I have not since varied. That we had a shadow of right beyond the Sabine I never believed since the conclusion of the Florida treaty, and, it is from the date of that treaty, that Great Britain had not a shadow of right upon the Oregon territory until we have been pleased to confer it upon her."
"I am, dear sir, with great respect, your very obedient servant,
J. Q. ADAMS."
To Brantz Mayer, Esq., Baltimore."
[89] Alexander VIth's Bull of Donation.