382 APPENDIX TO COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



are now trausmitted to JMr. Middleton for the adjustment, by amicable 

 negotiation, of the coniiicting claims of tlie parties on this subject. 



We have been informed by the Baron de Tuyll that a simitar author- 

 ity has been given on the part of the British Government to Sir 

 Charles Bagot. 



Previous to the restoration of the Settlement at the mouth of Colum- 

 bia River in 1818, and again upon the first introduction in Congress of 

 the plan for constituting a Territorial Government there, some disposi- 

 tion was manifested by Sir Charles Bagot and by Mr. Canning to dispute 

 the right of the United States to that establishment, and some vague 

 intimation was given of British claims on the north-west coast. The 

 restoration of the place and the Convention of 1818 were considered 

 as a final disposal of Mr. Bagot's objections, and Mr. Canning declined 

 committing to paper those which he had intimated in conversation. 



The discussion of the Russian pretensions in the negotiation now 

 proposed necessarily involves the interests of the three Powers, and 

 renders it manifestly proper that the United States and Great Britain 

 should come to a mutual understanding with respect to their respective 

 pretensions, as well as upon tbeir joint views with reference to 

 58 those of Russia. Copies of the instructions to Mr. Middleton are, 

 therefore, herewith transmitted to you, and the President wishes 

 you to confer freely with the British Government on the subject. 



The princii)les settled by the ISTootka Sound Convention of the 28th 

 October, 1790, were : 



1. That the rights of fishery in the South Seas, of trading with the 

 natives of the north-west coast of America, and of making Settlements 

 on the coast itself for the purposes of that trade, north of the actual 

 Settlements of Spain, were common to all the European nations, and 

 of course to the United States. 



2. That so far as the actual Settlements of Spain had extended, she 

 possessed the exclusive rights, territorial, and of navigation and fishery, 

 extending to the distance of 10 miles from the coasts so actually 

 occupied. 



3. That on the coasts of South America, and the adjacent islands 

 south of the parts already occupied by Spain, no Settlement should 

 thereafter be made either by British or Spanish subjects, but on both 

 sides should be retained the liberty of landing, and of erecting tem- 

 porary buildings for the purj^ose of the fishery. These rights were 

 also, of course, enjoyed by the people of the United States. 



The exclusive rights of Spain to any part of the American continents 

 have ceased. That portion of the Convention, therefore, which rec- 

 ognizes the exclusive colonial rights of Spain on these continents, 

 though confirmed as between Great Britain and Spain by the first 

 Additional Article to the Treaty of the 5th July, 1814, has been extin- 

 guished by the fact of the independence of the South American nation 

 and of Mexico. Those independent nations will possess the rights 

 incident to that condition, and their territories will of course be sub- 

 ject to no exclusive right of navigation in their vicinity, or of access to 

 them by any foreign nation. 



A necessary consequence of this state of things will be that the 

 American continents henceforth will no longer be subjects of coloniza- 

 tion. Occupied by civilized independent nations, they will be access- 

 ible to Europeans and to each other on that footing alone, and the 

 Pacific Ocean in every part of it will remain open to the navigation of 

 all nations in like manner with the Atlantic. 



