cure its rights, and, if necessary, to punish those depraved individuals who conspire to destroy the liberty, independence, and reputation of America.

MARTIN RODRIGUEZ.

DECREE of the Government of Buenos Ayres, and Correspondence with the British Naval Officer in the River Plate, respecting the employment of British Subjects in the Military Service of Buenos Ayres.—April, 1821.

(1.)--Decree of the Government of Buenos Ayres.--10th April, 1821. (Translation.)

THE Honourable Junta has considered in several Sittings the important business submitted, by your Excellency, to their deliberation, grounded on the various and repeated solicitations of Don Felix Alzaga, Colonel of the Regiment del Orden, that Foreigners, residing in this City and Province, should be compelled to aid with their services, in consideration of existing circumstances, the Country whose protection they enjoy. This Honourable Junta has minutely investigated to its foundation the perverse and insulting disdain with which the said Foreigners disobey the various Orders emanating from the Government, relative to themselves, and paralyze measures most important to the interesting objects committed to your Excellency's charge, and to which they owe every respect and consideration. It has been penetrated, therefore, with the imperious necessity of adopting a general plan, which, by the establishment of a permanent regulation in that particular, for the future, may serve as a guide for your Excellency, and prevent the inconvenience resulting from such opposition. For this purpose it has agreed to enact as a Law the following Articles.

ART. I. Every Foreigner having a shop, store, or chandlers-shop, for retailing provisions, he being an Owner of landed property, or exercising any art or profession, must be enlisted in the Local Corps of Militia, and will, in future, be subject to all the duties which belong to that class of Citizens.

II. All Merchants who have established houses of business, together with their Clerks, are comprehended in the preceding Article.

III. Strangers in general are equally comprehended in it, whatever be their business or occupation, if they have been resident 2 years together in the Country.

IV. Foreigners who refuse to fulfil the duties required by the Society which admits and protects them, will be compelled to the observance of them during their residence in the Country; the Government being responsible for the exact and punctual performance of this resolution.

V. Foreigners, non-residents, shall also be obliged to render to the Country those services which the Government may deem absolutely necessary, in order to preserve it from the imminent danger with which it is threatened; but without losing sight of the considerations which they deserve, and much less those which the interests of the State demand.

This Honourable Junta has also resolved to return to your Excellency the Papers relative to this important affair, in order that, in conformity with the said Articles, the solicitations and instances of the said Colonel of the Regiment del Orden, may be acted upon: all which is communicated to your Excellency, for your information and its fulfilment.

God preserve your Excellency many years.

Chamber of Sittings, Buenos Ayres, 10th April, 1821.

MANUEL DE LUZURIAGA, President.
PEDRO MEDRANO, Secretary.

The Most Excellent the Governor and Capt.-General of the
Province of Buenos Ayres, Don Martin Rodriguez.

Execute what is commanded by the preceding Honourable Decree, which must be transcribed by the Minister of War; remitting to him the Precedents which caused the Report made on the 5th instant; and, that it may come to the knowledge of all who are comprehended in the Decree, let it be published in the customary manner.

[With the Rubrick of His Excellency the Governor and CaptainGeneral.] LUCA.

SIR,

(2.)-The British Merchants at Buenos Ayres to Capt. O'Brien. Buenos Ayres, 11th April, 1821. IN consequence of a Decree just published by this Government, exacting the personal services of all Foreigners resident here in the Local Militia of this place, and tending in other respects to identify them as Citizens of this State; the undersigned British Residents, convened in a General Meeting, beg to represent to you, as Commanding Officer of His Britannic Majesty's Naval Forces on this Station, that, consistently with the allegiance which they owe to their own Government, and with a due observance of its Laws, more particularly of the late Act called "The Foreign Enlistment Bill," they can on no plea take up arms in aid or defence of this or any other Foreign State; and their decided and unanimous determination being to quit the Country, should this Government insist on making the above Decree applicable to them, they respectfully request that you will make this determination known to the existing Authorities, and

* 59 Geo. III. Cap. 69.-3rd July, 1819.

arrange at the same time for a sufficient period being allowed, and every other facility granted to them, for the winding up of their affairs in this Country. We have the honour to be, &c.

[Signed by 49 British Subjects.]

D. H. O'Brien, Esq. Senior Officer commanding His Majesty's
Ships and Vessels off Buenos Ayres.

(3.)—Captain O'Brien to the Governor of Buenos Ayres.

H. M. Ship Slaney, off Buenos Ayres, 16th April, 1821. MOST EXCELLENT SIR,

As the British Senior Naval Officer of His Majesty's Ships and Vessels in this part of the River Plate, it becomes my indispensable duty, and it is with great regret I have to state to your Excellency, that I feel most seriously disappointed in finding that there has been no Reply to the two different Representations which I had the honour, personally, of making to you on the 12th, through my Interpreter, together with a translated Copy of an official Letter to me from the British Merchants, &c. in this Country, which I had the honour of transmitting for your Excellency's perusal, setting forth the impossibility of their compliance with a Decree, passed on the 10th instant, by the Honourable Senate of Buenos Ayres, sanctioned and published by your Excellency's authority, on the 11th, requiring them to be formed into a Corps, and identifying them with the Natives;-inasmuch as the said Decree, as I had already repeatedly observed to your Excellency in Council, verbally, and have confirmed by extracts from Vattel, the celebrated Writer of the Law of Nations, (to whom all the Nations of Europe, in a great degree, look for information in the regulating of their conduct towards Foreigners, as well as with regard to one another,) is in contradiction to the said Law, and also totally at variance with the system of strict Neutrality which the Government of His Majesty the King of Great Britain has thought proper to command his liege Subjects to observe, and with the Foreign Enlistment Bill recently passed in the British House of Parliament. I have to add, that the British Subjects have ever been ready to arm themselves in defence of their persons and property, conformable to the said Law.

Whatever might have been the original intention of the Honourable Senate, in having passed the aforesaid Decree, I feel it incumbent on me to observe, with all due respect to that Honourable Body, that it cannot be viewed by an impartial eye, without exciting the suspicion that it had emanated from a desire to fix upon and to issue some particular Edict, which it would be out of the power of the Parties concerned to comply with; in which the Honourable Senate have most completely succeeded. The exigencies of the case require it, and I rather feel it to be my bounden duty, as British Naval Officer, and

the only Representative of His Britannic Majesty's Government, here, in the name and on the behalf of His Britannic Majesty, to protest, in the most solemn and positive manner, against the said measure being carried into execution; as it cannot be considered in any other light than hostile to his liege Subjects, to whose interest and protection (consistent with strict justice, and conformable to the established rules. and regulations exercised by all civilized Nations) His Britannic Majesty is always ready to pay attention.

I have further the honour to observe, Most Excellent Sir, that Great Britain, although the last to give offence, and ever ready to render assistance to the deserving who may need it, will be the first to resent insult or injury. I trust your Excellency will see with me the propriety of rescinding the aforesaid Decree, as far as it concerns His Britannic Majesty's liege Subjects; but, in the event of the reverse being the case (which I should be sorry to contemplate), I shall take the earliest opportunity of communicating the occurrence to the Senior Officer on board His Majesty's Ship Superb at Maldonado; to the Commander in Chief of His Majesty's Ships and Vessels in South America; to His Britannic Majesty's Minister at the Court of Brazil; and of transmitting a Copy of this Declaration to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty of Great Britain, for the information of His Majesty's Government; and, in the mean time, I shall take the necessary steps to prevent your Excellency being further annoyed, by the arrival at this Port of any more British Subjects or British property.

And I have to request your Excellency will grant 6 months at least, and every other facility, to enable the British Merchants now here to make their different commercial arrangements, to which the Law of Nations, and the commercial benefits which they have rendered during their long residence in this Country, so justly entitle them. I have the honour to remain, &c.

H. E. Don Martin Rodriguez.

D. H. O'BRIEN.

(4.)—The Buenos Ayres Minister for Foreign Affairs to Captain

(Translation.)

O'Brien.

Buenos Ayres, 17th April, 1821.
PREVIOUSLY to the receipt by his Excellency the Governor, of the
Note which the Captain of the English Vessel of War, off Buenos
Ayres, had addressed to him under date of the 16th instant, his Excel-
lency had passed a Resolution of the following tenor:

(Inclosure.)—Resolution of the Government of Buenos Ayres.
Buenos Ayres, 14th April, 1821.

The Decree of the Honourable Junta of Representatives of the Province, of the 10th instant, comprehending only Foreigners who are land-holders, or in a certain degree established in the Country, in which case there can be no doubt of its exact conformity with the

H

Principles of the Laws of Nations universally practised in Civilized Nations, the exception cannot be admitted, which, agreeably to the exposé verbal of the Commandant of His Britannic Majesty's Naval Forces, certain Individuals of that Nation demand, who, should they be of the classes (of which this Government is ignorant, in as much as the said Commander has not made any return of their names) so clearly described in the three first Articles of the said Resolution, will be liable, like all other Foreigners, to whatever regulations may be here established; they being assured that, as respects the wholesale Merchants established in the Country, and in consequence of the attention their affairs require, this Government, in regard to the enlistment in the Local Militia, will grant to them every possible consideration. If, notwithstanding this, they still insist in carrying into execution their plan of quitting the Country, sooner than submit to the Laws enacted by the Government under whose protection they live, they may do so, as hitherto, freely and without waiting any fixed time for the arrangement and conclusion of their affairs; they may take their own time, keeping in mind that, agreeably to the tenor of the IV. Article of the said Decree, so long as they remain in the Country, they must observe punctually what is ordered in it, as well as all other Laws and Regulations now existing or that may be hereafter enacted.

Communicate this Resolution to the Minister at War for the needful purposes, and that the Parties interested may be informed thereof, let it be published in the Gazette.

By order of his Excellency, I transcribe the foregoing Resolution, for the information of the Commandant of His Britannic Majesty's Naval Forces off Buenos Ayres, adding, that the Governor and Captain-General requests that the said Commandant, previously to any other official demand that he may believe it his duty to address to the Authorities of this Country, will satisfy him that that which he holds from His Britannic Majesty duly authorizes him to appear in the public character he has assumed in the present affair, or in others of a similar nature that may hereafter occur with regard to the Government on which he depends.

JUAN M. DE LUCA.

The Captain of the Slaney, British Sloop of War.

(5.)-Capt. O'Brien to the Buenos Ayres Minister for Foreign Affairs. H. M.'s S. Slaney, off Buenos Ayres, 19th April, 1821.

CAPTAIN O'Brien of His Britannic Majesty's Ship Slaney, has the honour of acknowledging the receipt of an Official Communication of the 17th instant, made to him through the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by order of his Excellency Don Martin Rodriguez, Governor and Captain-General of the Province, and has the honour to