G32 



PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



It is not known that any seizure of a fishing-vessel 

 carrying the flag of the United States has been made 

 under this claim. So far as the claim is founded on an 

 alleged construction of the Convention of 1818, it can- 

 not be acquiesced in by the United States. It is 

 hoped that it will not be insisted on by her Majesty's 

 Government. 



During the conferences which preceded the nego- 

 tiation of the Convention of 4818 the British commis- 

 sioners proposed to expressly exclude the fishermen 

 of the Imited States from "the privilege of carrying 

 on trade with any of his Britannic Majesty's subjects 

 residing within the limits assigned for their use," 

 and also that it should not be " lawful for the vessels 

 of the United States engaged in said fishery to have 

 on board any goods, wares, or merchandise whatever, 

 except such as may be necessary for the prosecution 

 of their voyages to and from the said fishing-grounds. 

 And any vessel of the United States which shall con- 

 travene this regulation may be seized, condemned, 

 and confiscated, with her cargo." 



This proposition, which is identical with the con- 

 struction now put upon the language of the conven- 

 tion, was emphatically rejected by the American com- 

 missioners, and thereupon was abandoned by the 

 British plenipotentiaries, and Article I., as it stands 

 in the convention, was substituted. 



If, however, it be said that this claim is founded 

 on provincial or colonial statutes and not upon the 

 convention, this Government cannot but regard them 

 as unfriendly and in contravention of the spirit, if 

 not of the letter of the treaty, for the faithful execu- 

 tion of which the Imperial Government is alone re- 

 sponsible. 



Anticipating that an attempt may possibly be made 

 by the Canadian authorities in the coming season 

 to repeat their unneighborly acts toward our fisher- 

 men, I recommend you to confer upon the Executive 

 the power to suspend by proclamation the operation 

 of the laws authorizing tne transit of goods, wares, 

 and merchandise in bond, across the territory of the 

 United States to Canada ; and further, should such an 

 extreme measure become necessary, to suspend the 

 operation of any laws whereby the vessels of the Do- 

 minion of Canada are permitted to enter the waters 

 of the United States. 



A. like unfriendly disposition has been manifested 

 on the part of Canada in the maintenance of a claim 

 of right to exclude the citizens of the United States 

 from the navigation of the St. Lawrence. This river 

 constitutes a natural outlet to the ocean for eight 

 States, with an aggregate population of about 17,- 

 600,000 inhabitants, and with an aggregate tonnage 

 of 661,367 tons upon the waters which discharge into 

 it. The foreign commerce of our ports 011 these 

 waters is open to British competition, and the major 

 part of it is done on British bottoms. 



If the American seamen be excluded from this 

 natural avenue to the ocean, the monopoly of the 

 direct commerce of the lake ports with the Atlantic 

 would be in foreign hands, their vessels on trans- 

 atlantic voyages having an access to our lake ports, 

 which would be denied to American vessels on similar 

 voyages. To state such a proposition is to refute 

 its justice. 



During the Administration of John Quincy Adams, 

 Mr. Clay unanswerably demonstrated the natural 

 right of the citizens of the United States to the navi- 

 gation of this river, claiming that the act of the Con- 

 gress of Vienna, in opening the Rhine and other 

 rivers to all nations, showed the judgment of Eu- 

 ropean jurists and statesmen, that the inhabitants of 

 a country, through which a navigable river passes, 

 have a natural right to enjoy the navigation of that 

 river to and into the sea, even though passing through 

 the territories of another power. This right does not 

 exclude the coequal right of the sovereign, possessing 

 the territory through which the river debouches into 

 the sea, to make such regulations relative to the po- 

 lice of the navigation as may be reasonably necessaiy, 



but those regulations should be framed in a liberal 

 spirit ofcornity, and should not impose needless 

 burdens upon the commerce which has the right of 

 transit. It has been found, in practice, more ad- 

 vantageous to arrange these regulations by mutual 

 agreement. The United States are ready to make 

 any reasonable arrangements as to the police of the 

 St. Lawrence which may be suggested by Great 

 Britain. 



If the claim made by Mr. Clay was just when the 

 population of the States bordering on the shores of 

 the lakes was only 3,400,000, it now derives greater 

 force and equity from the increased population, 

 wealth, production, and tonnage of the States on the 

 Canadian frontier. Since Mr. Clay advanced his 

 argument in behalf of our right, the principle for 

 which he contended has been frequently, and by 

 various nations, recognized by law or by treaty, and 

 has been extended to several other great rivers. By 

 the treaty concluded at Mayence, in 1831, the Rhine 

 was declared free from the point where it is first 

 navigable into the sea. By the convention between 

 Spain and Portugal, concluded in 1835, the navigation 

 of the Douro, throughout its whole extent, was made 

 free for the subjects of both crowns. In 1853 the" 

 Argentine Confederation, by treaty, threw open the 

 free navigation of the Parana and the Uruguay to 

 the merchant-vessels of all nations. In 1856 the 

 Crimean War was closed by a treaty which provided 

 for the free navigation of the Danube. In 1858 

 Bolivia, by treaty .declared that it regarded the rivers 

 Amazons and La Plata, in accordance with fixed prin- 

 ciples of national law, as highways or channels, 

 opened by Nature, for the commerce of all nations. 

 In 1859 the Paraguay was made free by treaty, and 

 in December, 1866, the Emperor of Brazil, by impe- 

 rial decree, declared the Amazons to be open to the 

 frontier of Brazil to the merchant-ships of all nations. 

 The greatest living British authority on this subject, 

 while asserting the abstract right of the British 

 claim, says : "It seems difficult to deny that Great 

 Britain may ground her refusal upon strict law, but 

 it is equally difficult to deny, first, that in so doing 

 she exercises harshly an extreme and hard law ; sec- 

 ondly, that her conduct with respect to the naviga- 

 tion of the St. Lawrence is in glaring and discredit- 

 able inconsistency with her conduct with respect to 

 the navigation of the Mississippi. On the ground 

 that she possessed a small domain, in which the 

 Mississippi took its rise, she insisted on the right to 

 navigate the entire volume of its waters. On the 

 ground that she possesses both banks of the St. 

 Lawrence, where it disembogues itself into the sea, 

 she denies to the United States the right of naviga- 

 tion, though about one-half of the waters of Lakes 

 Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Superior, and the whole 

 of Lake Michigan, through which the river flows, are 

 the property of the United States." 



The whole nation is interested in securing cheap 

 transportation from the agricultural States of the 

 West to the Atlantic seaboard. To the citizens of 

 those States it secures a greater return for their labor ; 

 to the inhabitants of the seaboa_rd it affords cheaper 

 food ; to the nation an increase in the annual surplus 

 of wealth. It is hoped that the Government of Great 

 Britain will see the justice of abandoning the narrow 

 and inconsistent claim to which the Canadian prov- 

 inces have urged her adherence. 



Our depressed commerce is a subject to which I 

 called your special attention at the last session, and 

 suggested that we will in the future have to look 

 more to the countries south of us, and to China and 

 Japan, for its revival. Our representatives to all 

 these Governments have exerted their influence to 

 encourage trade between the United States and the 

 countries to which they are accredited. But the fact 

 exists that the carrying is done almost entirely on 

 foreign bottoms, and while this state of affairs exists 

 we cannot control our due share of the commerce of 

 the world. That between the Pacific States and 



