SPANISH CLAIM TO NOOTKA SOUND.
England reaped material benefit from the temporary extinction of France as a factor in the affairs of Europe, consequent on the proceedings of the assembly. Some difficulties with Spain had been removed by a convention arranged in 1786, by which Great Britain agreed to withdraw the settlers from the Mosquito coast, and the Spanish king allowed them to occupy a district in Honduras. As this compliance on the part of England checked the smuggling of goods into the Spanish colonies, it was well received by Spain. Hostile feelings towards England soon revived. Florida Blanca, the Spanish minister, was anxious to increase trade with the colonies, and was determined to keep it exclusively for the mother-country. It was impossible to prevent English ships from interfering with it. The colonies of Spanish America were discontented; some insurrections had been made with the object of gaining direct trade with other nations, and the malcontents hoped for help from England.[221] Florida Blanca believed that England sought first to establish direct commercial communication with her Spanish American colonies, and, finally, to separate them from the mother-country.[222] He was determined to prevent these designs, which had no existence in England, and was upheld in his purpose by the extravagant opinion held by himself and his nation as to the strength of their country. He found his opportunity in 1789. Some English merchants had established a settlement at Nootka Sound, off Vancouver's island, for trade in furs and ginseng with China. In April one of their ships with its cargo was seized in the Sound by a Spanish frigate, the officers and crew were maltreated, and two more ships were seized shortly afterwards. Satisfaction was demanded by the English government, and was refused by Spain on the grounds that all lands on the west coast of America as far as 60° north latitude were under the dominion of Spain, and further that Nootka belonged to Spain, because it had been discovered and occupied by a Spanish captain four years before Cook visited those coasts.
CONVENTION WITH SPAIN.
The English government held that these pretensions were inadmissible, for there was no effective occupation by Spain; it refused to discuss them, and claimed that the king's subjects had a right to navigate and fish in those waters and settle on unoccupied lands.[223] Spain prepared for war, and Florida Blanca seems to have made overtures to Austria and Russia in the vain hope that they would enter into an active alliance with his court.[224] The affair was kept secret in England until May 3, when the preparations of Spain demanded immediate action. On that day an order in council was passed for pressing seamen in every port in the kingdom, and the commons unanimously agreed to a vote of credit of £1,000,000 for expenses. The matter was laid before the two other members of the triple alliance; the Dutch at once fitted out a squadron to act with the British fleet, and a favourable answer was received from the Prussian king. The French ministers, moved by the news of the naval preparations of Great Britain, and expecting to be called on to fulfil the obligation expressed in the family compact, ordered the armament of fourteen ships of the line. On this the national assembly voted that it had the right to decide on questions of war, and on May 22 declared that the French nation renounced wars of conquest. This grandiloquent decree destroyed the effect of the armament. Nevertheless, Spain was set on war; fleets were gathered at Ferrol and Cadiz, and a loan of £4,000,000 was arranged. Florida Blanca seems to have relied on help from the United States, and made some efforts to gain their good-will, but they did not respond to them.[225] From France he peremptorily demanded the assistance to which Louis was pledged by the family compact. His demand was laid before the national assembly, and on August 25 it was decided to substitute a new pacte national for the pacte de famille, and to invite the king to arm forty-five ships for defence, and to revise the treaty; and a suggestion was made to Spain that she might confirm the new compact by the cession of Louisiana. This was mere folly. The English ministers notified the French government that any help given to Spain would be promptly resented,[226] and Florida Blanca seeing that no reliance was to be placed on France entered into negotiations with England. During their progress a fresh cause of offence was given to England; for in September McDonald, captain of a British West Indiaman, reported that his ship had been stopped by a Spanish frigate in the Gulf of Florida, that he had been forced to go aboard the Spaniard, and had there been cruelly tortured, being set in the bilboes in the blazing sun.[227] For this outrage satisfaction was promptly made, and on October 28 a treaty was signed between Great Britain and Spain by which Spain yielded to the demands of the British court with reference to the Nootka Sound affair and restored the disputed territory. The submission of Spain marks a complete change in her policy; she sought by compliance towards England to gain the security no longer to be looked for from alliance with France. It was a signal triumph for Pitt, who as usual had directed the proceedings of the foreign office, for Carmarthen, who succeeded his father as Duke of Leeds in 1789, was a feeble person. Pitt had broken up the family compact and could reckon on the compliance of Spain. France was isolated and had exhibited her weakness before the eyes of Europe. The despicable proceedings of the national assembly saved England from a war, and dissolved the alliance which had so long threatened her.[228]
FOOTNOTES:
[208] Parl. Hist., xxv., 1094.
[209] George III. to Pitt, June 14, 1786, MS. Pitt Papers, 103, quoted in Stanhope's Life of Pitt, i., App. xix.
[210] Parl. Hist., xxvi., 287.
[211] Bulkeley to Buckingham, March 10, 1788, Court and Cabinets of George III., i., 360-61; Parl. Hist., xxvii., 115-27.
[212] Copies of correspondence relating to the Prince of Wales given by the king to Pitt in Jan., 1787, MS. Pitt Papers, 105; Malmesbury, Diaries, ii., 126-31.