DOCUMENTS BEAEING ON THE TREATY OP GHENT, 1814. 255 



this river, have been considered of mutual and equal advantage, and 

 furnished no subject for compensation or adjustment in any other 

 provision of that treaty. Both parties believed that this river touched 

 the territories of both, and that, of course, both had a right to its 

 navigation. As Spain possessed both banks of this river, to a con- 

 siderable distance from its mouth, and one of its banks nearly through- 

 out its whole extent, both parties had an interest in uniting to pre- 

 vent that power from obstructing its navigation. Had not the article 

 been intended to engage the parties in relation to Spain, they would, 

 probably, have limited it to the navigation of the river as far as their 

 own territories extended on it, and not have stipulated for this navi- 

 gation to the ocean, which necessarily carried it through the exclusive 

 territories of Spain. 



If the circumstances had been, in fact, such as the parties at the 

 time believed them to be, and with a view to which they acted; or 

 had these circumstances subsequently experienced no radical change ; 

 Great Britain would have gained now no more than she would have 

 granted by the revival of the article in relation to the Mississippi, 

 and would not, any more than in 1783, have acknowledged any 

 equivalent to be conferred by it for our liberty relative to the fisheries. 

 The circumstances, however, assumed by the parties, at the time, in 

 relation to Great Britain, and from which her rights were deduced, 

 have not only, in part, been discovered not to have existed, but those 

 which did exist have been entirely changed by subsequent events. It 

 has been ascertained that the territories assigned to Great Britain, 

 no where, in fact, reached the Mississippi; and the acquisition of 

 Louisiana by the United States has forever removed the Spanish 

 jurisdiction from that river. 



The whole consideration, therefore, on the part of Great Britain, 

 whether derived from her territorial rights, or from her part of the 

 reciprocal obligations relative to Spain having entirely failed, our 

 engagements, entered into on account of that consideration, may be 

 fairly construed to have terminated with it. 



In this view of the subject, Great Britain, could have had no title 

 to the navigation of the Mississippi, even if a war had not taken place 

 between the parties. To renew, therefore, the claims of Great 

 Britain, under that article, subject to this construction, would be 

 granting her nothing ; and to renew that article, independent of this 

 construction, and without any reference to the circumstances that 

 attended its origin, in 1783, or to the events which have since occurred 

 in relation to it, would be granting her advantages not only entirely 

 unilateral, as it relates to the article itself, but, as I believe, of much 

 greater importance than any which we could derive from the liberty 

 relative to the fisheries. 



If the article which we offered merely intended to rescue the third 

 and eighth articles of the treaty of 1783, from the operation of the 

 present war, and to continue them precisely as they were immediately 

 prior to this war, the third article being then in full force, and the 

 eighth article being no longer obligatory, we should have attempted 

 to exchange, like General Drummond, the dead for the living. 



It is not surprising, therefore, that the British government should, 

 in suspecting such an intention, have rejected our proposition. I was 

 opposed, however, to making the proposition, not only because I 

 was convinced that it was offered with no such intention, but because 



