[white] RUSSIAN AMERICA (ALASKA)— TREATY OF 1825 75 



some equivalent concession can be obtained in respect to the longitudinal 

 demarcation to the Westward in the higher latitudes I may perhaps find it 

 advisable to exceed (very largely I admit) the letter of your instructions by 

 assenting to some such limit rather than submit to the inconvenience which 

 might, and probably would arise from a protracted delay in the settlement 

 of the question. But I shall in no case venture to make any further cession, 

 and I shall feel it my duty to suspend the whole negotiation if any further ad- 

 vantage is insisted upon by the Russian Government. 



When I write to you officially upon this matter I shall of course send you 

 in greater form the details above of the negotiation, but as it has been protracted 

 rather more than I at first expected, I have thought that you would like to know 

 privately and shortly how we are going on. 



The negotiations with the American Ministers are not yet concluded. 



I am &c 



CHARLES BAGOT 



Sir Charles Bagot to Mr. George Canning 



St. Petersburgh, 



March 29, 1824 

 Private, by Messenger Draffin 



You will perhaps think from my long despatch about N. W. Coasts that I 

 have worked myself into a rage upon the subject. This is not so — but I now 

 -know this Government well, and I wish to impress upon you that in a question 

 such as that in hand, they must be dealt with as you would deal with a horse- 

 dealer. Their whole conduct in the late négociation has been of the most huck- 

 stering and pedlarlike character, and in my opinion they will not be brought 

 to reason, unless they are told roundly that if they will not arrange the matter 

 equitably and according to our mutual present conveniences, they shall not be 

 allowed to settle any where upon the islands or continent South of their present 

 lowest establishment, viz: Sitca. They have not a shadow of claim below this 

 point, and very little above it, to stand upon. It is too much to claim to the 

 51st degree (they might equally well have claimed to the 42d) and then to 

 treat their retractation of a preposterous pretension as a concession with which 

 they may be permitted to market. The Emperor Paul's pretension to the 55th 

 degree in 1799 was never notified to any Power upon earth. In the affair of 

 Nootka Sound, only nine years before, the Empress Catherine told the Court 

 of Spain (see Annual Register, 1790), that she had no pretensions on these 

 coasts which interfered with theirs, and theirs extended to the 60th degree. 

 In the instructions given by Louis the XVIth (no bad geographer) to La Perouse 

 in 1785, it was never supposed that Russia had any claims whatever upon the 

 Continent and it was doubted whether She had the right of occupancy in all the 

 Kurile and Aleutian Islands. These instructions are so remarkable that I 

 cannot resist enclosing to you an extract of them. 



I hope that you will read my despatch and its enclosures with the map 

 before you, but that you may see at once how very liberally I have been dis- 



