173 



States, but by her treaties with Spain ; secured indeed in a manneii 

 far more unrestrained than in our proposal ; for by the treaties 

 with Spain, she was entitled to the passage both in and out of the 

 mouth of the river, and that none of her vessels should be stopped^ 

 visited, or subjected to the payment of any duty whatsoever. The 

 right, therefore, which she would have held under the proposal of 

 1st December, 1814, would have been, so far as our original territo= 

 ry extended, precisely the same as by her treaty with us of 1783 ; 

 and so far as related to the territory which had belonged to Spain, 

 in 1783, infinitely more restricted than it had been under her trea- 

 ties with Spain. Yet under all the advantages of the right as se- 

 cured to her by hier treaties with Spain, it never had been of any 

 use to her ; for the simple reason that she had no settlement on the 

 river. Now, her boundary, as with us, remained, at the negotia- 

 tion of Ghent, precisely the same as it had been agreed upon at the 

 peace of 1783. She had formed no settlement on the river; but 

 she was entitled by that treaty to a line from the Lake of the Woods 

 to it. We proposed to her a new line, which would cut her ofi" 

 from it ; which she offered to accept, with the reservation of the 

 Fight to navigate the river. All the change, therefore, between 

 the right which Great Britain had enjoyed under the treaties of 

 1783, and that which she would have enjoyed under our proposal 

 of 1814, was to the disadvantage of Great Britain, and went to the 

 annulment of the value to her, even contingent and eventual, of the 

 right. 



The worthlessness to the British of this right of navigating the 

 Mississippi, had been very distinctly perceived, and clearly pointed 

 out in the debates, in the British Parliament, on the preliminary 

 articles of peace of November, 1782. On that occasion, the Eaii 

 of Carlisle said, in the House of Lords : 



" But we keep the navigation of the Mississippi ! and so we might 

 " say that we keep that of the Rhone or the Rhine. We are not 

 " possessed, for 3000 miles, of a sing'e acre of its shores : ani 

 *' West Florida, where the Mississippi meets the sea, is by the 

 " treaty in the hands of the Spaniards. To what sort of under- 

 ^'standings is this fallacy addressed, or for what description of ra^ 

 ** tional beings is this delusion calculated V 



Lord Walsingham : — " Nothing could be so absurd as to stipulate 

 *' for the navigation of the Mississippi, and yet cut off all communi- 

 " cation with it. What was meant by the navigation of the Missis- 

 *' sippi, as agreed on in the treaty, he professed he could not tell.'^ 



Viscount Stormont — " exposed in glaring colours the folly of 

 " stipulating for the navigation of the Mississippi, when every thing 

 " that could make the Mississippi valuable, was gone. We had n» 

 ** coast ; there was no junction even with the Lakes ; no commu- 

 '' nication by which we could transport our furs to any market. Id 

 " short, the article for the navigation of the Mississippi was an it- 

 " suit on our understandings, added to all the injuries done t» on." 

 '' property by the present peace," 



