482 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



The decision of the Imperial Ministry is stated by his Excellency the 

 Yice-Chancellor to result from the very circumstances set forth in the 

 note of the Undersigned, as well as from an affidavit of an officer 

 recently returned from the Eussian Colonies, and to be founded upon 

 the Convention of 1824. As the contents of the affidavit are not men- 

 tioned, they are presumed not to affect materially the narrative of the 

 note, and certainly not to introduce any substantive assertion or denial 

 adequate to give the case a totally new character, and to exact, by its 

 own force merely, a judgment which could not be reached without it. 

 The remarks, therefore, which the Undersigned proiDoses to subjoin are 

 necessarily restricted to the admitted allegations on behalf of Captain 

 Blinn in connection with the stipulations of the Treaty. 



If, in pursuing this course, any injustice be done to the reasoning or 

 views of the Imperial Ministry, he will, on the slightest intimation, 

 hasten to rectify it with the frankness which he esteems indispensable 

 to the faithful discharge of his representative duty. 



Avoiding a repetition of details heretofore eiuimerated, as well as 

 their aggravating features, the leading facts of reclamation are that 

 the brig "Loriot," owned and commanded by American citizens, sailed 

 from the Sandwich Islands on the 22nd August, 1836, bound to the 

 northwest coast, to procure provisions and Indians for hunting sea- 

 otter; that, having made Forrester's Island, she anchored in the harbour 

 of Tuckessan,in latitude 54° 55' north; that no Eussian establishment 

 existed in that harbour; that four days afterwards an armed brig of 

 His Imperial Majesty's navy went into a neighbouring harbour, called 

 Tateskey, in latitude 54° 45' north; that no Eussian establishment 

 existed in this latter harbour; that she was boarded by officers from 

 the armed brig, by whom her captain was first ordered to leave the 

 dominions of Eussia, and subsequently compelled to get under way and 

 sail for the harbour of Tateskey ; that when oft" the harbour of Tateskey 

 she was, in threatening weather, refused permission to enter, and per- 

 emptorily again commanded to quit the waters of His Imperial Majesty; 

 and, finally, that owing exclusively to this interference of armed force 

 her voyage was abandoned, and she returned to the Sandwich Islands 

 on the 1st November. It is this plain and brief story which the Under- 

 signed, by instruction of his Government, has termed inconsistent with 

 the rights of American citizens, immemorially exercised and secured 

 by the laws of nations, as well as by the stipulations of the 1st Article 

 of the Convention of 1824, and entitling the parties injured to such 

 indemnification as miglit on an investigation be found justly their due. 



The right of the citizens of the United States to navigate the Pacific 

 Ocean, and their right to trade with the aboriginal natives of the north- 

 west coast of America, without the jurisidiction of other nations, are 

 rights which constituted a part of their independence as soon as they 

 declared it. They are rights founded in the law of nations, enjoyed in 

 common with all other independent sovereignties, and incapable of being 

 abridged or extinguished, except with their own consent. It is unknown 

 to the Undersigned that they have voluntarily conceded these rights, 

 or either of them, at any time, through the agency of their Govern- 

 ment, by Treaty or other form of obligation, in favour of any commu- 

 nity. Yet he deduces from the communication of his Excellency, after 

 having given it the careful consideration to which every act from such 

 a source lays claim, as the only ground upon which the reclamation on 

 behalf of Captain lilinn is resisted, the proposition that the United 

 States, by the Convention of 1824, yielded to His Imperial Majesty the 

 right to hold commerce, on the expiration of ten years, with the aborig- 



