426 API'ENDIX TO CASE OP GREAT BRITAIN. 



myvsolf to say what iniglit be the o]>iiii(ni oi' llis Majesty's Government 

 as to tlie pretensions so tenacionsly adhered to by tbe Imperial Govern- 

 ment, farther than by saying- that certainly tliey were such as had 

 never been contemplated by my Court in tlie instructions with which I 

 had been as yet furnished, and that if a territorial arrangement per- 

 fectly satisfactory to both parties couhl not now be made, it might 

 possibly be thouglit by my Government that our respective preten- 

 sions might still remain without any serious inconvenience in the state 

 in which they hg-d before stood, and that it would oidy be necessary for 

 the present to confine their attention to the adjustment of the more 

 urgent point of the maritime pretensions — a point which Avould not 

 admit of equal postponement. 



In reply to this ol)servation Count Ncsselrode stated, to my extreme 

 surprise, that if the territorial arrangement was not completed, he did 

 not see the necessity of making any agreement respecting the mari- 

 time question; and I found myself most unex])ectedly under the neces- 

 sity of again exijlaining very distin.ctly, both to him and to M. Poletica, 

 that the maritime pretension of Russia was one which, violating as it 

 did the first and most established principles of all public maritime law, 

 admitted neither of explanation nor modification, and that my Govern- 

 ment consideied themselves possessed of a clear engagement on the 

 part of Kussia to retract in some way or other a pretension which could 

 neither be justified nor enforced. 



Here the matter rested; but I ought to state that, notwithstanding 

 this nnexpected observation of Count Nesselrode, I do not at all 

 believe that, had we been able to agree upon our southern line 

 55 of demarcation, we should have found any real difticnilty either 

 as regards the retraction of the maritime i^reteusion, or as 

 regards our western boundary, or any of the other minor details which 

 we should have been called upon to adjust; but the observation was 

 made, and considering what has already passed upon this subject both 

 here in London and in America, considering also the delicacy with 

 which His Majesty had left it to the Russian Government themselves 

 to frame the terms in which their retractation of this preposteious 

 l)retension should be made. His Majesty's Government may i)erhaps 

 think it advisable that Count Lieven should be again given clearly to 

 nnd(M^stand that it is a point to which no slight importance is attached 

 by His Majesty, and that the pretension as it now stands will admit of 

 no remedy but that of publick, formal, and precise retractation in some 

 shape or another. 



Such has been the course of my late negotiation upon this question, 

 and such the grounds upon which I have thought it my duty to suspend 

 it for the present. 



I know full well the inconvenience of breaking off such a negotiation 

 in such a stage and upon a i)oint which, judging only by the Map, 

 might perhaps appear of so little real im])ortance to His Majesty's 

 present interests, but when I consider by liow much I have already 

 exceeded my instructions, how more than doul)trul is the real right of 

 this Government to any ])art of the territory in most immediate disi)ute, 

 and how inuch more exorbitant are their ])retensions upon tlu^ noith- 

 west (continent of Americai tlian I had before had reason to sus])ect, I 

 certainly could iu>t venture to1ak<' ui)on myself the h(>avy responsibility 

 of making any further concessions of a territory the value and ])Ossible 

 local advantages of which 1 had no means of estimating and which J 

 believe are as yet so iin])errectly known. 



