g Walter and
Keymis, Mr. Gardiner apparently must have exonerated Ralegh. He would
have been safe within his commission, which appointed him leader of an
armed force for the obvious purpose of resisting impediments to his
progress about Guiana, unless where Spaniards were in immediate
possession. Warfare with Spaniards in Guiana is not in itself
represented as criminal. His sole offence was in combating them
voluntarily on ground they positively occupied. The same defence which
he might have conclusively urged if soldiers, descending from the
original San Thome, had blocked his transit, is justly pleadable for his
men's voyage on the Orinoko past the new town. Guiana in general being
free to Englishmen, it is manifest that a settlement on the bank could
not appropriate the channel. The whole question of the guilt or
innocence of Ralegh on James's reading of international law, is narrowed
to the minute issue whether the Spaniards or the Englishmen on the
particular scene of the fight were the aggressors. Whatever the decision
upon that, it is difficult to see how it could properly affect Ralegh.
His right and his duty were to find and take possession of the Mine, if
it were not in Spanish hands, as nobody alleges it was. He was entitled
to break through obstacles in his way, so long as he did not violate
actual Spanish soil. Lawfully he sent his comrades along the Orinoko. If
on their road the Spaniards compelled a contest, neither Ralegh nor his
subordinates were in fault. If his captains compelled it, he cannot have
been liable, unless he be proved, as he has not been, to have so
instructed them. In any event, when all Spanish officers in America
notoriously deemed an Englishman a pirate who entered the Orinoko
without their leave, and King James claimed authority to send his
subjects wherever in Guiana Spaniards were not permanently planted, it
is unreasonable to throw the liability for an armed brawl between
Spaniards and Englishmen in Guiana upon the English chief. His
Sovereign, who with eyes open despatched him with an armament to work a
mine of prodigious value, cannot be permitted to shift on him the odium
of a bloody struggle because the goal turned out to be some eight miles
off, instead of the twenty more or less at which both master and subject
had judged it to be.

[Sidenote: _Difficulties of the Government._]

The design of the Government had been to discover proof of fresh crimes
since Ralegh's liberati