To this promise of restitution is subjoined, that "this engagement to restore port Egmont cannot, nor ought, in any wise, to affect the question of the prior right of sovereignty of the _Malouine_, otherwise called Falkland's islands."
This concession was accepted by the earl of Rochford, who declared, on the part of his master, that the prince of Masseran, being authorized by his catholick majesty, "to offer, in his majesty's name, to the king of Great Britain, a satisfaction for the injury done him, by dispossessing him of port Egmont;" and, having signed a declaration, expressing that his catholick majesty "disavows the expedition against port Egmont, and engages to restore it, in the state in which it stood before the 10th of June, 1770, his Britannick majesty will look upon the said declaration, together with the full performance of the engagement on the part of his catholick majesty, as a satisfaction for the injury done to the crown of Great Britain."
This is all that was originally demanded. The expedition is disavowed, and the island is restored. An injury is acknowledged by the reception of lord Rochford's paper, who twice mentions the word _injury_, and twice the word _satisfaction_.
The Spaniards have stipulated, that the grant of possession shall not preclude the question of prior right, a question which we shall probably make no haste to discuss, and a right, of which no formal resignation was ever required. This reserve has supplied matter for much clamour, and, perhaps the English ministry would have been better pleased had the declaration been without it. But when we have obtained all that was asked, why should we complain that we have not more? When the possession is conceded, where is the evil that the right, which that concession supposes to be merely hypothetical, is referred to the Greek calends for a future disquisition? Were the Switzers less free, or less secure, because, after their defection from the house of Austria, they had never been declared independent before the treaty of Westphalia? Is the king of France less a sovereign, because the king of England partakes his title?
If sovereignty implies undisputed right, scarce any prince is a sovereign through his whole dominions; if sovereignty consists in this, that no superiour is acknowledged, our king reigns at port Egmont with sovereign authority. Almost every new-acquired territory is, in some degree, controvertible, and till the controversy is decided, a term very difficult to be fixed, all that can be had is real possession and actual dominion.