§ MR. WEGUELINsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether a Convention has been concluded between the British Government and the Ministers of Spain and of Chile, in virtue of which vessels of war built and equipped in this country will be permitted to sail from the ports of the United Kingdom; whether the Minister of the Republic of Peru, which is at war with Spain, has protested against this arrangement; and whether, notwithstanding this protest, licenses have been issued to permit the sailing of certain vessels of war now lying ready for sea in British Ports; and, whether the Government will lay the Convention, if it exist, upon the table of the House, or declare the reasons why it has departed in this instance from the rules of neutrality hitherto observed towards belligerents?
LORD STANLEYSir, no such Convention has been concluded as that referred to in the Question of the hon. Member. What has taken place is this. For several years, as the House is well aware, Spain has been at war with Chile and Peru, those two States acting together in close alliance. But for a long time past—I think for the last two years—no act of hostility has been committed on either side; in fact the war appears to have de facto ceased, although no terms have been come to, and therefore peace has not been proclaimed. Under these circumstances, the Spanish and Chilean Ministers made a joint application to the Foreign Office that their Governments might be allowed to remove certain vessels of war on each side, which, according to the general law, had been detained in English ports since the war broke out. I regarded this request as practically equivalent to a cessation of hostilities; and after reference to the Law Officers of the Crown, who saw no objection to the course we proposed to pursue, licenses were issued for those vessels to be removed upon certain conditions, one of those conditions being that they should be bound to proceed direct to the port to which they belonged, neither attacking nor being attacked on the voyage. We certainly understood from both parties that the Peruvian Government, which, as I have stated, has throughout this war made common cause with Chile, was a consenting patty to this arrangement. No objection was taken on the part of the 1459 Peruvian Government till after the licenses had been issued. Afterwards I received, much to my surprise, a protest from the Peruvian Minister, to which, unfortunately, the only answer I could give was, that if he had intended to object to the transaction he ought to have made his application at an earlier period. I looked upon the request as, in fact, indicating the termination of the war. But even on the utterly improbable assumption that war might break out again, no injury will have been done to either party, seeing that the vessels released to each will balance or neutralize one another. I do not admit, therefore, that there has been any departure from the rules of neutrality, which it has been our wish and object to enforce throughout.