Page:Memoir upon the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America which led to the treaty of 1819.djvu/145

 NEGOTIATION

��WITH

��THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

��The disagreements which gave rise to the ne- gotiation with the United States of America, may be said to have taken their origin from the treaty of amity, limits, and navigation, coucluded in 1795. This treaty signed by Don Manuel Godoy without any geographical knowledge of the countries upon which it turned, nor of the mutual interests of the two powers, gave to the American territory about one degree, in the whole extent of the dividing line between the Floridas and the territory of that Repub- lick, from East to West, and put into their hands the most fertile lands that belonged to the Floridas, the most beautiful rivers that flowed from Georgia and Mississippi, the important post of Natches, and other fortifications that served for our defence of the Floridas against the United States. This impoli- tick cession, made without any necessity, (for at that time Spain might have dictated the law to that Republick,*) proved to the United States with how

jesty ceased to call these United States his colonie^j when Spain could have " dictated the law" to them. Don Man- uel Godoy was perfectly aware of this truth. T.
 * " That time" \\sis never been, since his Britannick ma-

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