572 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. | 
The inclosed copies of correspondence, extracted from the archives of 
this Office, make it very difficult to believe that Mr. Blaine has not 
been altogether led into error. It results from them that not only did 
Her Majesty’s Government formally protest against the Ukase on its 
first issue as contrary to the acknowledged law of nations, but that the 
Russian Government gave a verbal assurance that the claim of juris- 
diction would not be exercised. In the subsequent negotiations great 
importance was attached to obtaining a more formal disavowal of the 
claim in the manner least hurtful to Russian susceptibilities, but so 
as effectually to preclude its revival. And this security the British 
Government undoubtedly considered that both they and the United 
States had obtained by the Conventions of 1824 and 1825. 
Upon this point the instructions given by Mr. George Canning to 
Mr. Stratford Canning when the latter was named Plenipotentiary to 
negotiate the Treaty of 1825 have a material bearing. 
Writing under date the 8th December, 1824, after giving a summary 
of the negotiations up to that date, he goes on to say: 
It is comparatively indifferent to us whether we hasten or postpone all questions 
respecting the limits of territorial possession on the Continent of America, but the 
pretensions of the Russian Ukase of 1821, to exclusive dominion over the Pacific, 
could not continue longer unrepealed without compelling us to take some measure 
of public and effectual remonstrance against it. 
519 You will, therefore, take care in the first instance to repress any attempt to 
give this change to the character of the negotiation, and will declare, without 
reserve, that the point to which alone the solicitude of the British Government, and 
the jealousy of the British nation, attach any great importance is the doing away 
(in a manner as little disagreeable to Russia as possible) of the effect of the Ukase of 
1821. 
That this Ukase is not acted upon, and that instructions have long ago been sent 
by the Russian Government to their cruizers in the Pacific to suspend the execution 
of its provisions, is true, but a private disavowal of a published claim is no security 
against the revival of that claim; the suspension of the execution of a principle may 
be perfectly compatible with the continued maintenance of the principle itself. 
* * * * * * ” 
The right of the subjects of His Majesty to navigate freely in the Pacific cannot 
be held as a matter of indulgence from any Power. Having once been publicly 
questioned, it must be publicly acknowledged. 
We do not desire that any distinct reference should be made to the Ukase of 1821, 
but we do feel it necessary that the statement of our right should be clear and posi- 
tive, and that it should stand forth in the Convention in the place which properly 
belongs to it as a plain and substantive stipulation, and not be brought in as an 
incidental consequence of other arrangements to which we attach comparatively 
little importance. 
This stipulation stands in the grant of the Convention concluded between Russia 
and the United States of America, and we see no reason why, upon similar claims, we 
should not obtain exactly the like satisfaction. 
For reasons of the same nature we cannot consent that the liberty of navigation 
through Behring’s Straits should be stated in the Treaty as a boon from Russia. 
The tendency of such a statement would be to give countenance to those claims of 
exclusive jurisdiction against which we, on our own behalf and on that of the whole 
civilized world, protest. 
* * * * ® * * 
It will of course strike the Russian Plenipotentiaries that, by the adoption of the 
American Article respecting navigation, &c., the provision for an exclusive fishery 
of 2 leagues from the coasts of our respective possessions falls to the ground. 
But the ommission is, in truth, immaterial. 
The law of nations assigns the exclusive sovereignty of 1 league to each Power off 
its own coasts, without any specified stipulation, and though Sir Charles Bagot was 
authorized to sign the Convention with the specific stipulation of 2 leagues, in igno- 
rance of what had been decided in the American Convention at the time, yet, after 
that Convention has been some months before the world, and after the opportunity 
of reconsideration has been forced upon us by the act of Russia herself, we cannot 
now consent, in negotiating de novo, to a stipulation which, while it is absolutely 
unimportant to any practical good, would appear to establish a contract between 
the United States and us to our disadvantage. 
