WITH the repulse of the last Spanish attack on the
British settlers in the Bay of Honduras in 1798, a new
epoch in the history of British Honduras opened. But
while the territorial expansion of the settlement was to proceed
apace, the transition from acknowledged subordination to de
facto independence was gradual, almost indeed haphazard.
Already, it is true, in 1799, the settlers were inclined to argue
that they now held the settlement by right of conquest; and this
argument was one which the British Government, at a later
date, itself employed. Thus, in a Note presented to the Spanish
Government, the British Minister at Madrid stated in 1835 that
whereas, up till 1798, the settlers enjoyed territorial occupancy
while the right of sovereignty was reserved to Spain, after that
date the country had been 'held under a different title'; ¹ and in
1882 Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, in the course of
correspondence with the United States, directly asserted that
'the sovereignty of British Honduras was acquired by conquest'. ²
But however convenient this argument, it was, historically,
quite unjustifiable; it accorded neither with the facts of the
situation between 1800 and 1814 nor with the terms of the
treaties under which peace was restored with Spain.

The first of these peace treaties bearing on the history of the
Bay settlement was the Treaty of Amiens, of 27 March 1802,
under which (Article 3) Great Britain agreed to restore to Spain
all possessions and colonies occupied or conquered by British
forces in the course of the war, with the exception of the island
of Trinidad. ³ On the face of it, therefore, whatever title to
Belize might have been acquired by conquest in 1798 was lost

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