174 



Viscounl Sackville :— '' All the forls were on the American side ; 

 <« the immense district of country which supplied us with masts was 

 " gone ; the Indian nations were abandoned ; and we were insult- 

 «' ed with the navigation of the Mississippi, when all its benefits 

 " were taken away." 



To all this, the only reply of the minister, the Earl of Shel- 

 burne, was : 



" The navigation of the Mississippi has been reprobated as an 



'» useless acquisition. Could men seriously assert this ? Was a 



** navigation of so many hundred miles up a country where there 



" is a call for our manufactures, an useless thing ? Surely not."* 



[Hansard'^s Parliamentary History, vol. 23. 



In the House of Commons, lord North said : 



" There seems to be a peculiar mockery in the article which- 

 " grants us an eternal and free navigation of the Mississippi, from 

 " its source to the ocean, in participation with the United States. 

 " Such is the freedom of the navigation, that where we were not 

 ** locally excluded, we have effected it by treaty We were ex- 

 " eluded by the northern boundary. The east is possessed by the 

 ** Americans. The west had been ceded by the peace of Paris to 

 " the French, who had since granted it to the Spaniards ; and each 

 « shore, at its mouth, is ceded by the present treaty to Spain. — 

 *' Where is then this navigation, so free and open, to be commenced ? 

 " All the possession, I believe, that we shall ever have, will be its 

 ** nomination in this treaty. We must be content with the grant, 

 *' without the possession." p. 451. 



Mr. Fox : " By the boundaries which have been so carelessly 



" prescribed, we have excluded ourselves from the Mississippi ; 

 *' so that we only retain the name, without being able to enjoy its 

 " possession." p 535. 



To these objections, no reply was made in the House of Com- 

 mons. They were all grounded on the very obvious principle that 

 the mere right of navigating a river from its source to the ocean, 

 can be of no use to a nntion, having no settlement on the river ; 

 yet, at that time, as Great Britain retained a boundary line to the 

 river, she might have subsequently formed a settlement upon it 

 which would have given value to the right. At the time of the 

 treaty of Ghent, thirty years of experience had proved the cor- 

 rectness of those views by which the right of navigating the Mis- 

 sissippi, reserved to the British by the treaties of 1783, had been 

 represented as merely nominal and worthless ; and by the propos- 

 ed 8th article of the treaty, Great Britain was to abandon her claim 

 even of ever coming in territorial contact with the river. 



Until a better answer, therefore, than this can be given to the 

 opinion that the proposal offered to the British would have been, 

 if accepUd, of no value to them, and of no injury to us, 1 shall take 

 the libertj to consider it as demonstrated. Nor will it be suflBcient 



