Probably no question in the history of this continent has been the subject of so much discussion as the lives and voyages of the two Cabots.  Their personal character, their nationality, the number of voyages they made, and the extent and direction of their discoveries have been, and still are, keenly disputed over.  The share, moreover, of each in the credit due for the discoveries made is a very battle-ground for historians.  Some learned writers attribute everything to John Cabot; others would put him aside and award all the credit to his second son, Sebastian.  The dates even of the voyages are disputed; and very learned professors of history in Portugal do not hesitate to declare that the voyages are apocryphal, the discoveries pretended, and the whole question a mystification.

Nevertheless, solely upon the discoveries of the Cabots have always rested the original claims of the English race to a foothold upon this continent.  In the published annals of England, however, no contemporary records of them exist; nor was there for sixty years in English literature any recognition of their achievements.  The English claims rest almost solely upon second-hand evidence from Spanish and Italian authors, upon contemporary reports of Spanish and Italian envoys at the English court, upon records of the two letters-patent issued, and upon two or three entries lately discovered in the accounts of disbursements from the privy purse of King Henry VII.  These are our title-deeds to this continent.  The evidence is doubtless conclusive, but the whole subject of western discovery was undervalued and neglected by England for so long a period that it is no wonder if Portuguese savants deny the reality of those voyages, seeing that their nation has been supplanted by a race which can show so little original evidence of its claims.

It is not my intention to wander over all the debatable ground of the Cabot voyages, where every circumstance bristles with conflicting theories.  The original authorities are few and scanty, but mountains of hypotheses have been built upon them, and too often the suppositions of one writer have been the facts of a succeeding one.  Step by step the learned students before alluded to have established certain propositions which appear to me to be true, and which I shall accept without further discussion.  Among these I count the following: 

1.  That John Cabot was a Venetian, of Genoese birth, naturalized at Venice on March 28, 1476, after the customary fifteen years of residence, and that he subsequently settled in England with all his family.

2.  That Sebastian, his second son, was born in Venice, and when very young was taken by his father to England with the rest of the family.

3.  That on petition of John Cabot and his three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancio, letters-patent of King Henry VII were issued, under date March 5, 1496, empowering them, at their own expense, to discover and take possession for England of new lands not before found by any Christian nation.