terized, purposely and actively shunned that notoriety which is required to establish adverse holding. The process, of acquiring prescriptive rights by stealth is precisely what the law forbids, and it is to prevent this that it exacts that adverse holding shall be under a notorious claim. It is the laches of the owner that justifies the rule by which a wrongful possession may grow into a title; but the owner is not chargeable with laches unless he has notice that the possession is held under a claim, and he has no such notice where the acts by which the possession is sought to be established are not inconsistent with the ownership of another, or where the adverse claimant studiously refrains from advancing his claim and is silent where he ought to speak. Before dismissing this subject it may be well to contrast the Spanish claim and their method of enforcing it with that which the Dutch Company imposed upon the Director-General. According to the latter's own testimony in his Memorandum of 1764 (V. C. II, 157), he says: "What can we expect from the removal of the Spanish colonies in Guayana so much nearer to our boundaries? The latter go to work openly, like a proud nation, and they can therefore be better opposed, an open enemy never being so dangerous as a secret one.” |