APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 447 



The tendency of such a statement would be to give countenance to 

 those chiims of exchisive jurisdiction against which we, on our own 

 behalf, and on that of the whole civilized world, protest. 



ISfo specification of this sort is found in the Convention with the 

 United States of America, and yet it cannot be doubted that the Ameri- 

 cans consider themselves as secured in the right of navigating Beh- 



riug's Straits and the sea beyond them. 

 74 It cannot be expected that England should receive as a boon 



that which the United States hold as a right so unquestionable 

 as not to be worth recording. 



Perhaps the simplest course after all will be to substitute, for all that 

 ])art of the "projet" and "counter i)rojet" which relates to maritime 

 rights and to navigation, the first two Articles of the Convention 

 already concluded by the Court of St. Petersbnrgh with the United 

 States of America, in the order in which they stand in that Convention. 



Eussia cannot mean to give to the United States of America what 

 she withholds from us; nor to withhold from us anything that she has 

 consented to give to the United States. 



The uniformity of stipulations in pari materia gives clearness and 

 force to both arrangements, and will establish that footing of equality 

 between the several Contracting Parties which it is most desirable 

 should exist between three Powers whose interests come so nearly in 

 contact with each other in a part of the globe in which no other Power 

 is concerned. 



This therefore is what I am to instruct you to propose at once to the 

 Eussian Minister as cutting short an otherwise inconvenient discussion. 



This exi^edient will dispose of Article I of the " projet" and of Article 

 V and VI of the " contre projet." 



The next Articles relate to the territorial demarcation, and upon them 

 I have only to jnake the following observations: 



The Russian Plenipotentiaries propose to withdraw entirely the limit 

 of the lisiere on the coast which they were themselves the first to pro- 

 pose, viz., the summit of the mountains which run parallel to the coast, 

 and which appear, according to the Map, to follow all its sinuosities, and 

 to substitute generally that which we only suggested as a corrective of 

 their first proposition. 



We cannot agree to this change. It is quite obvious that the boundary 

 of mountains, where they exist, is the most natural and effectual 

 boundary. The inconvenience against which we wished to guard was 

 that which you know and can thoroughly explain to the Russian Pleni- 

 potentiaries to have existed on the other side of the American Conti- 

 nent, when mountains laid down in a Map as in a certain given position, 

 and assumed in faith of the accuracy of that Map as a boundary between 

 the possessions of h^ngland and the United States turned out to be quite 

 differently situated, a discovery which has given rise to the most per- 

 plexing discussions. Should the Maps be no more accurate as to the 

 western than as to the eastern mountains, we might be assigning to 

 J-fussia immense tracts of inland territory, where Ave only intended to 

 give and they only intended to ask, a striy) of sea coast. 



To avoid the chance of this inconvenience we proposed to qualify the 

 general ])roposition, " that the mountains should be the boundary, with 

 the condition if those mountains should not be found to extend beyond 

 10 leagues from the coast." The Russian Plenipotentiaries now propose 

 to take the distance invariably as the rule. But we cannot consent to 

 this change. The mountains, as I have said, are a more eligible bound- 

 ary than any imaginary line of demarcation, and this being their own 



