DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 299 



capable of being reduced to possession and therefore susceptible of 

 ownership. I have already said that it defies the mastery of men, 

 and that being of none, it remains of all and is common to all. 



The use of the ocean belongs to man and nations in so far only as 

 it is being exercised. It is a right to such alone as exercise it, for 

 the time they exercise it, and within the space over which it is exer- 

 cised. As soon as it is abstained from, the right ceases it is at an 

 end gone. Cum igitur nil nisi usus marls et littorum occupari possit, 

 facile constat jus hoc utendi tantum dictare quamdiu quis utitur et 

 quatenus utitur. 



The ocean, therefore, is free. Yet will some say: May not its 

 dominion be conferred from one nation to another by all men to 

 one? It is clear that it cannot. Concede this, and what becomes of 

 its freedom ? If its sovereignty can be conferred, it can be conquered ; 

 and if so, it becomes at once the property of the first occupant or of 

 the strongest. Force, in the one case, will be as legitimate as injustice 

 in the other. Even its enjoyment could not be of one man and of one 

 nation, without all other nations and men renouncing the rights 

 which Nature has given equally to them all. 



But this is no longer insisted upon. It has grown obsolete ; it is not 

 as much as thought of, unless, indeed, it be by some incorrigible tyro 

 of the school of Selden, or some fanatic and blind admirer of every 

 dictum that ever fell from the fertile pen of Grotius. The difficulty 

 is not there. But some contend that though the sea the main, the 

 high sea be the common thoroughfare of mankind, there are yet 

 parts of it susceptible of and subject to dominion, which, on that ac- 

 count, may rightfully be claimed as the property of the nation having 

 sovereignty over their immediate coasts. 



Armed with these principles, and supported by the opinion of her 

 Crown Officers. England presumes to do away with all restrictions 

 injurious to her in the Treaty of 1818, and placing a most untenable 

 construction on the limits which that Treaty assigns to her maritime 

 jurisdiction, claims that those limits are to be measured from head- 

 land to headland, thus assuming that under that Treaty our vessels 

 are excluded from the Bay of Chaleur, the Bay of Miramichi, the 

 Bay of Fundy, and the Straits of Northumberland, within which the 

 greatest quantity of the best mackerel are now taken. 



The disasters and loss which such a pretension, if strictly enforced, 

 would entail upon a large portion of the inhabitants of New Eng- 

 land, can hardly be computed, although some idea may be formed of 

 them from the short memorial that I send to the Secretary's desk to 

 be read. It was addressed to the lamented Member of the other 

 House whose untimely and much-regrettable loss we had lately to 

 deplore, and has found its way to my hands through the kind in- 

 dulgence of a friend. [The Clerk read the memorial of fishermen, 

 citizens of Massachusetts, stating the damage which they will eustain 

 in consequence of the late measures adopted by the British Cabinet, 

 unless an armed force of the United States is sent to protect them, 

 &c.. &c.] 



And thus, if I may be allowed to borrow the pithy language of the 

 Boston Journal, 



two thousand vessels and thirty thousand men and boys are now exposed to the 

 cannon of a British fleet, aud the cruelties and horrors of British prisons for 

 doinj: just what they have for thirty-four years been accustomed to do without 

 molestation. 



