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other, by which Great Britain obtained possession of Canada, Florida, and the whole of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans and its island. By the seventh article of this treaty, "In order to reestablish peace on a firm and durable foundation, and to remove forever all subjects of dispute with regard to the limits of the British and French territories on the continent of America, it is agreed that, for the future, the confines between the dominions of his Britannic majesty and those of his most Christian majesty, in that part of the world, shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the river Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville, and from thence by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lakes Maurepas and Ponchartrain, to the sea;" all east of the line so drawn being secured to Great Britain, and the navigation of the Mississippi made free to both nations. The interests of France in the New World were so small, after these arrangements, that they could scarcely of themselves afford grounds for dispute between her and Spain; and the two crowns were, moreover, supposed to be firmly united by a treaty celebrated in history as the Family Compact, concluded in 1762, through the agency, chiefly, of the duke de Choiseul, prime minister of France, by which the sovereigns of those kingdoms guarantied to each other all their dominions in every part of the world, and engaged to consider as their common enemy any nation which should become the enemy of either.

The claims of Spain to the sovereignty of the western side of America were never made the subject of controversy with any other state until 1790; but her pretensions to the exclusive navigation of the Pacific, though upheld by her government even after that period, had long before ceased to be regarded with respect by the rest of the world. The smugglers and pirates of Great Britain, France, and Holland, led the way into that ocean; they were followed by the armed squadrons of those nations, with one or other of which Spain was almost always at war; and during the intervals of peace came the exploring ships of the same powers, whose voyages were, with good reason, considered at Madrid as ominous of evil to the dominion of Spain in America.

These exploring voyages became more frequent, and their objects were avowedly political as well as scientific, after the peace of 1763. Between that year and 1779, the Pacific and the southern oceans were annually swept by well-appointed ships of Great Britain or France, under able navigators, whose journals were published, immediately on the conclusion of their voyages, in the

most authentic manner possible, illustrated by maps, plans, tables, views of scenery, and portraits of natives, all conspiring to afford the most exact ideas of the objects and places described in the narratives. New lands and new objects and channels of commercial and political enterprise were thus opened to all; and new principles of national right, adverse to the subsistence of the exclusive system so long maintained by the Spanish government, were established and recognized among all other states.

The voyages of the British exploring ships were, until 1778, confined to the southern parts of the ocean; but the Spanish government had been constantly in dread of their appearance in the North Pacific, particularly as a navigable communication between that ocean and the Atlantic, in the north, was again generally believed to exist. The acquisition of Canada by Great Britain rendered the discovery of such a passage much more important to that power, as there was less danger that any other nation should derive advantages from it, to the injury of British interests; while Spain, becoming possessed of Louisiana, which was supposed to extend indefinitely northward, had thus additional reasons for viewing with dissatisfaction any attempts of her rival to advance westward across the continent.

Serious grounds of apprehension were also afforded by the proceedings of the Russians on the northernmost coasts of the Pacific. All that was generally known of them was obtained from the maps and accounts of the French geographers, which, though vague and contradictory, yet served to establish the certainty that this ambitious and enterprising nation had formed colonics and naval stations in the north-easternmost part of Asia, and had found and taken possession of extensive territories beyond the sea bathing those shores; and these circumstances were sufficient to alarm the Spanish government for the safety of its provinces on the western side of America.

In order to avert the evils thus supposed to be impending, and at the same time to revive the claims of Spain to the exclusive navigation of the Pacific, and to the possession of the vacant territories of America adjoining her settled provinces, as well as to render those provinces more advantageous to and dependent on the mother country, a system was devised at Madrid, about the year 1765, embracing a series of measures which were to be applied as circumstances might dictate or permit. This system, which is supposed to have been elaborated chiefly by Carrasco, the fiscal of

the Council of Castile, and Galvez, a high officer of the Council of the Indies, embraced reforms in every part of the administration, particularly in the finances of the American dominions, the shameful abuses in which had been laid open by Ulloa, in his celebrated report* presented to the government in 1747. It was likewise intended that the vacant coasts and islands, adjacent to the settled provinces in the New World, should be examined and occupied by colonies and garrisons sufficient for their protection against the attempts of foreign nations to seize them, or at least to secure to Spain the semblance of a right of sovereignty over them, on the ground of prior discovery and settlement. The deliberations. with regard to this system seem to have been conducted with the utmost secrecy by the Spanish government; and no idea was entertained of its objects in 1766, when Galvez, the officer above named, arrived in Mexico as visitadór,† with full powers to carry the new measures into effect in that part of the dominions.

This Galvez was a man of the most violent and tyrannical disposition. His arbitrary proceedings in financial matters occasioned an insurrection in the province of Puebla, which nothing but the firmness and good sense of the marquis de Croix, then viceroy of Mexico, prevented from becoming general. He then engaged in an expensive war against the Indians in Sonora and Sinaloa, the countries bordering on the eastern side of the Californian Gulf, from which very little either of honor or of profit accrued to Spain; and a portion of his impetuosity having thus escaped, he turned his attention towards California, where he was charged with an important duty.

The sovereigns of continental Europe and their ministers had long been impatient and jealous of the influence enjoyed, or sup

Noticias secretas de America - Secret information respecting the internal administration of Peru, Quito, Chile, and New Granada, collected by Don Antonio de Ulloa and Don Jorge Juan, who had been sent for that purpose by the Spanish government in 1740; the only work from which it is possible to obtain a true picture of the state of those countries, and of the abuses and corruptions practised in them by the Spanish officials. It was first published at London, in 1826, by some political refugees of that nation, who had obtained possession of the original manuscript.

"This title is given to persons charged by the court of Madrid to make inquiries as to the state of the colonies. Their visits, in general, produce no other effects than to balance for a time the authorities of the viceroy and the audiencia, [powers almost always at variance,] and to cause an infinite number of memorials, petitions, and plans, to be devised and presented, and some new tax to be imposed. The people of the country look for the arrival of a visitadór with the same impatience with which they afterwards desire his departure."- Humboldt's Essay on Mexico, book ii. chapter vii.

posed to be enjoyed, by the Jesuits; and the governments of Spain and Portugal, though always opposed to each other, were equally mistrustful as to the objects and proceedings of that order in the New World. Suspicions were entertained at Lisbon and at Madrid that those proceedings were not dictated solely by religious or philanthropic motives; but that the Jesuits aspired to the separation and exclusive control of the greater part, if not of the whole, of Southern America: and these suspicions were increased by the successful stand which they made in Paraguay, at the head of the natives, against the division of that province, and the transfer of a portion of its territory to Portugal, agreeably to the treaty concluded between the latter kingdom and Spain, in 1750. This act drew down upon the order the hatred of the subtle and fearless marquis de Pombal, who then ruled Portugal with a rod of steel; from that moment he devoted himself to its destruction, and, his plans having been disposed with care and secrecy, all its members were expelled from the Portuguese dominions, without difficulty, in 1759. In France, the Jesuits were soon after entirely overthrown by the agency of the duke de Choiseul, the minister, and madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV.; and on the 2d of April, 1767, a decree was unexpectedly issued by King Charles III. of Spain, at the instigation of the celebrated count de Aranda, for their immediate banishment from the Spanish territories. This decree was executed without delay in every part of the empire. In Mexico, the Jesuits, to the number of several hundreds, were, in July following, arrested and sent off to Europe; and a strong military force was at the same time despatched to California, under the command of Don Gaspar de Portola, who found no difficulty in tearing a few old priests from the arms of their wailing converts.

Thus ended the rule of the Jesuits in California. That their efforts were attended with good cannot be denied; for those who were the immediate objects of their care, were certainly rendered happier, more comfortable, and more free from vice, than they would otherwise have been. Unfortunately, however, the aborigines of California are among the most indolent and brutish of the human race; with minds as sterile and unimprovable as the soil of their peninsula. By constant watchfulness, by the judicious administration of rewards as well as punishments, by the removal of all evil examples, and, above all, by studiously practising themselves what they recommended to others, the benevolent, wise, and persevering Jesuits did indeed introduce a certain degree of civilization, or

apparent civilization, among these people; but there is no reason to believe that, by any means as yet employed for the purpose, a single Californian Indian has been rendered a useful, or even an innocuous, member of society.

There was, however, no intention on the part of the Spanish government to abandon California. On the contrary, the peninsula immediately became a province of Mexico, and was provided with military and civil officers dependent on the viceroy of that kingdom; and the missions were confided to the Dominicans, under whose austere rule the majority of the converts relapsed into barbarism. Establishments were also formed by the Spaniards on the western side of California; and the coasts farther north, which had been neglected for more than a hundred and sixty years, were explored in voyages made for the purpose from Mexico, as will be shown in the succeeding chapter.

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