PERTAINING TO NEGOTIATION OF TREATY OF 1818. 275 



United States had before acquired possession of territories asserted 

 to depend on other titles than those which Great Britain could confer. 

 The treaty of Ghent, indeed, adverted, as a fact of possession, to cer- 

 tain boundaries of the United States which were specified in the 

 treaty of 1783 ; but surely it will not be contended that therefore the 

 treaty of 17S3 was not considered at an end. 



It is justly stated by the American minister that the United States 

 did not need a new grant of the boundary line. The war did not 

 arise out of a contested boundary; and Great Britain, therefore, by 

 the act of treating with the United States recognised that nation in 

 its former dimensions, excepting so far as the jus belli had interfered 

 with them; and it was the object of the treaty of Ghent to cede such 

 rights to territory as the jus belli had conferred. 



Still less does the free navigation of the Mississippi, as demanded 

 by the British negotiators at Ghent, in any manner express or imply 

 the non-abrogation of the treaty of 1783 by the subsequent war. It 

 was brought forward by them as one of many advantages which they 

 were desirous of securing to Great Britain; and if in the first instances 

 demanded without equivalent, it left it open to the negotiators of the 

 United States to claim for their Government in the course of their 

 conferences, a corresponding benefit. The American minister will 

 recollect that propositions of this nature were at one time under dis- 

 cussion, and that they were only abandoned at the time that Great 

 Britain relinquished her demand to the navigation of the Mississippi. 

 If, then, the demand on the part of Great Britain can be supposed to 

 have given any weight to the present argument of the United States, 

 the abandonment of that demand must have effectually removed it. 



It is by no means unusual for treaties containing recognitions and 

 acknowledgments of title, in the nature of perpetual obligation, to 

 contain, likewise, grants of privileges liable to revocation. The treaty 

 of 1783, like many others, contained provisions of different charac- 

 ters — some in their own nature irrevocable, and others of a temporary 

 nature. If it be thence inferred that, because some advantages speci- 

 fic! in thai treaty would not be put an end to by the war, therefore 

 all the other advantages were intended to be equally permanent, it 

 must first be shown that the advantages themselves are of the same, 

 or at least of a similar character; for the character of one advantage 

 recognised or conceded by treaty can have no connexion with the 

 character of another, though conceded by the same instrument, unless 

 it arises out of a strict and necessary connexion between the advan- 

 tages themselves. But what necessary connexion can there be be- 

 tween a right to independence and a liberty to fish within British 

 jurisdiction, or to use Briti b territory? Liberties within British 

 limits are as capable of being exerci ed by a dependent, as by an in- 

 dependent 'ate. and cannot, therefore, be the necessary consequence 



of independence. 



The independence of a tate is that which cammt. be correctly said 

 to be granted by a treaty, but to be acknowledged by one. Ln the 

 treaty of L783, the independence of the United States was certainly 



acknowledged, not, merely by the con cut. to make, the treaty, but by 

 the previous consent to enter into the provisional articles executed in 

 November L782. The independence might have been acknowledged, 



without either the treaty or the provi* ional art ides; but, by whatever 

 92909°— S. Doc. 870, 'il 8, vol 2 19 



