Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/66

 56 G. L. Bttrr already seized or could conquer from the Portuguese alone, and hence, by implication, prohibition of all else. In support of their contention the Venezuelans were indeed able to produce a plea of the West India Company in its controversy with the English over New Netherland a dozen years later (November 5, 1660) which averred that " the King of Spain, first discoverer and founder of this new American world," had " at the conclusion of the peace made over to the United Netherland Provinces all his right and title to such countries and domains as by them in course of time had been conquered in Europe, America, etc.;" and the Britons on their side could point, not only to the contemporary report of the French en- voys at ?Iunster (that, while " the King of Spain consents to be de- barred from extending his boundaries in the East Indies," and to limit them to what he now occupies there, he agrees that " the con- quests which may be made by the United Provinces either over the natives of the country or over the Portuguese shall remain theirs "), but also to the verdict of the later Dutch statesman Basnage that " this article was advantageous to the Republic because Spain bound her hands and undertook not to make any new conquests in the East, while the Dutch retained the power to extend their limits far and wide in America, and particularly in Brazil." Yet, despite these dicta, and the clever arguments based upon them, I cannot believe that to any historian who has breathed the air of the seven- teenth century they will carry conviction. As we know from their own lips, the Dutch, who drew the treaty, had no mind that Spain, in such a document, should assume either to permit or to forbid their conquest of territory hers only by claim. The treaty left them free by its silence, it did not make them so by its stipulations ; and no more than this, surely, can have been meant by Basnage' or the French envoys. As for the quoted words of the West India Com- pany, they were a desperate special plea to meet an English claim of prior settlement, and were blushed for as soon as uttered ; for in the very next paragraph their authors protest that they deem " such claim and forced argument " unnecessary." Of the rights and claims of the Dutch West India Company, indeed, nothing really new was learned by either side, and the sweeping statements of the British Blue-Books were now abandoned or greatly modified.' ' Had I not held this view of Basnage's meaning and looked on it as self-evident, I should be more chagrined by my omission of these words of his from my report to the American Commission than by anything else these later researches have suggested. ^ Brodhead, Docuinents relative to the Colonial History of New York, II. 139. ^ That so misleading a statement as that " the Wild Coast was the original name of the coast between the Orinoco and the Essequibo ' ' ( where, of course, for Essequibo should be read Amazon ) could be retained in a footnote to the British evidence was, I am convinced, only an oversight : no attempt was made, in the argument, to use or to defend it.