120 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



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 

 instance demanded without equivalent, it left it open to the negotia- 

 tors 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 discussion, 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 char- 

 acters some in their own nature irrevocable, and others of a tem- 

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

 specified in that treaty would not be put an end to by the war, there- 

 fore 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 connection with the 

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

 it arises out of a strict and necessary connection between the ad- 

 vantages themselves. But what necessary connection can there be 

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

 jurisdiction, or to use British territory? Liberties within British 

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

 dependent State, and cannot, therefore, be the necessary consequence 

 of independence. 



The independence of a State is that which cannot be correctly said 

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

 treaty of 1783, the independence of the United States was certainly 

 acknowledged, not merely by the consent to make the treaty, but by 

 the previous consent to enter into the provisional articles executed 

 in November, 1782. The independence might have been acknowl- 

 edged, without either the treaty or the provisional articles; but, by 

 whatever mode acknowledged, the acknowledgment is, in its own 

 nature, irrevocable. A power of revoking, or even of modifying it, 

 would be destructive of the thing itself; and, therefore, all such 

 power is necessarily renounced when the acknowledgment is made. 

 The war could not put an end to it, for the reason justly assigned 

 by the American Minister, because a nation could not forfeit its 

 sovereignty by the act of exercising it; and for the further reason, 

 thai Great Britain, when she declared war on her part against the 

 United States, gave them, by that very act, a new recognition of their 

 independence. 



The nature of the liberty to fish within British limits, or to use 

 British territory, is essentially different from the right to independ- 

 ence, in all that may reasonably be supposed to regard its intended 



