DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 295 



This question, though not a novel one, still has its merits and at- 

 tractions, and may, perchance, be deemed not altogether unworthy of 

 notice. I shall proceed briefly to its consideration. 



England has, from time out of mind, attempted to arrogate to her- 

 self the supremacy of the ocean. She once ruled it supreme. But the 

 sceptre has fallen from her hands, and the sea has resumed its free- 

 dom. It is of all, and belongs to none. Who dares to claim, at this 

 day, to be the owner of it? Who presumes to command to its waves, 

 and to its currents, and to its storms? 



" The earth," says the Psalmist, " was given to the children of men ; 

 but the sea is of God alone." The sea is, from its very nature, unsus- 

 ceptible of human ownership. The idea of ownership implies that of 

 exclusive possession; and, of consequence, the right of using the 

 thing owned at will and not only that, but the right of excluding 

 others from its possession, and the necessity of so excluding them, 

 that the possessor may make HIS all the advantages it can yield. 

 The sea has none of the characters that could constitute it in owner- 

 ship of any man or nation. Its immensity, its fluidity, must forever 

 prevent its being subject to possession. It may be turned to profit 

 it is true, but by each and by all of the human species, without its 

 enjoyment by some, impairing or diminishing its enjoyment by others. 

 Its capacity is incommensurable. There is no volume that can ex- 

 haust it. Thousands of fleets may be sunk in it to-day, and to-morrow 

 it will again ingulf millions of others, without ever being filled or 

 notably compressed. There are no signs, no marks through which 

 to attest its occupancy. Even those frightful, though majestic, levi- 

 athans that now plough it over, in all directions, leave not behind 

 them any trace of their passage. The rolling wave paddled back as 

 they move on, wafts away from its surface the last vestiges of their 

 march. 



To make a thing yours by possession, you must possess in continuity 

 the same thing. Identity in the thing owned constitutes one of the 

 main elements of possession. A field, a forest, may be upturned, and 

 altered, and transformed ; they will still be the same field, the same 

 forest. Not so w r ith the ocean; so unceasingly changing in its form, 

 place and surface ; now sinking its upper layers in the uttermost re- 

 cesses of the deep, and then upheaving others from her lowest bed to 

 the surface, as if to spread them to the light of Heaven in 

 175 glorious exultancy. Its inexhaustibility renders its exclusive 

 enjoyment not only useless but impossible. You may take 

 from it for years and ages, with thousands and millions of men ; you 

 may seize upon its pearls, and its corals, and its salts, and its fishes 

 you but develop its powers of production and multiply the yieldings 

 of the mine from which you draw. By the decrees of God, the ocean 

 is of all man. Nations may undertake to explain and interpret those 

 decrees; they cannot abrogate them. 



Yet, Sir, nations have claimed ownership over it, or such a su- 

 premacy as seemed to constitute it in a sort of monarchy. They 

 would have other nations call them the queens of the sea. Yes, 

 Sir; they claimed to appropriate to themselves the sea, and to sub- 

 ject it to their exclusive dominion. The discovery of America, and 

 the vast development of commerce and navigation incident on it. 

 gave zest to, .and became a powerful stimulus for such assumptions. 



