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APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 583 
Majesty’s commands to direct you to repair to St. Petersburgh for that purpose, and 
to furnish you with the necessary instructions for terminating the long-protracted 
negotiation. 
The correspondence which has already passed upon this subject has been sub- 
mitted to your perusal. And I inclose you a copy— 
1. Of the ‘‘ Projet” which Sir Charles Bagot was authorized to conclude and sign 
some months ago, and which we had every reason to expect would have been entirely 
satisfactory to the Russian Government. 
2. Of a ‘‘ Contre-Projet” drawn up by the Russian Plenipotentiaries, and presented 
to Sir Charles Bagot at their last meeting before Sir Charles Bagot’s departure from 
St. Petersburgh. 
3. Of a despatch from Count Nesselrode, accompanying the transmission of the 
“ Contre-Projet ” to Count Lieven. 
In that despatch, and in certain marginal annotations upon the copy of the ‘‘Pro- 
jet,” are! assigned the reasons of the alterations proposed by the Russian Plenipo- 
tentiaries. 
In considering the expediency of admitting or rejecting the proposed alterations, 
it will be convenient to follow the Articles of the Treaty in the order in which they 
stand in the English “ Projet.” 
You will observe in the first place that it is proposed by the Russian Plenipotenti- 
aries entirely to change that order, and to transfer to the latter part of the instru- 
ment the Article which has hitherto stood first in the ‘‘ Projet.” 
To that transposition we cannot agree, for the very reason which Count Nesselrode 
alleges in favour of it, viz., that the ‘‘ Economie,” or arrangement of the Treaty, 
ought to have reference to the history of the negotiation. 
The whole negotiation grows out of the Ukase of 1821. 
So entirely and absolutely true is this proposition, that the settlement of the 
limits of the respective possessions of Great Britain and Russia on the north-west 
coast of America was proposed by us only as a mode of facilitating the adjustment 
of the difference arising from the Ukase, by enabling the Court of Russia, under 
cover of the more comprehensive arrangement, to withdraw, with less appearance 
of concession, the offensive pretensions of that Edict. 
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. 
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 been long ago 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, 
and when we have seen in the course of this negotiation that the Russian claim to 
the possession of the coast of America down to latitude 5°° rests, in fact, on no other 
ground than the presumed acquiescence of the nations of Europe in the provisions 
of an Ukase published by the Emperor Paul in the year 1800, against which it is 
affirmed that no public remonstrance was made, it becomes us to be exeeedingly 
careful that we do not, by a similar neglect on the present occasion, allow a similar 
presumption to be raised as to an acquiescence in the Ukase of 1821. 
The right of the subjects of His Majesty to navigate freely in the Pacific cannot 
be held as 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 front of the Convention concluded between 
5381 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 
