Note 211 — Chapter VII · ATTEMPTS AT PEACEABLE SETTLEMENT.
Reading edition
Merry to Leeds, Madrid, January 4, 1790. (A Narrative of the Negotiations Occasioned by the Dispute Between England and Spain in the Year 1790, 1.)
This Narrative is a very rare book, and very valuable for the subject in hand. No previous writer on the Nootka controversy has consulted it. Probably only a few copies were printed. The King’s own copy is now in the British Museum. That obtained for use in this study is the only other copy that Messrs. Henry Stevens, Son & Stiles, antiquarian booksellers of London, have noted during the whole of their business experience. Neither date nor name of publisher nor author is given. The British Museum catalogue gives 1791(?) as the date. It is evidently an official account prepared in the foreign office especially for the King. In a letter from J. B. Burges, under secretary for foreign affairs, to Lord Auckland, dated Whitehall, November 12, 1790, found in B. M. Add. MSS. 34434, f58, he mentions an “interesting Narrative, which, at leisure hours, I have prepared for the King, of the whole of this business.” A careful comparison of the printed Narrative with the documents in the public record office reveals the identity of the printed Narrative with the Narrative mentioned by Burges in this letter. The comparison also revealed the fact that the printed account is full and faithful. It is necessarily condensed, but nothing of importance is omitted.
The British chargé is the same Merry who, later, as minister to the United States, was connected with the Aaron Burr conspiracy.