APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 633 
free and open, for the term of ten years from that date, to the vessels, citizens, and 
subjects of the two Powers, without prejudice to the claims of either party or of 
any other State. 
“Vou are authorized to propose an Article of the sameimport for a term of ten years from 
the signature of a Joint Convention between the United States, Great Britain, and Russia.” 
Instructions of the same purport were sent by the same mail to Mr. Rush, our Min- 
ister at London, in order that the proposition should be completely understood by 
each of the three Powers. The confident presumption was that this proposition 
would, as a temporary settlement, be acceptable to all parties. But before there was 
time for full consideration of the proposition, either by Russia or Great Britain, 
President Monroe, in December 1823, proclaimed his famous doctrine of excluding 
future European Colonies from this continent. Its effect on all European nations 
holding unsettled or disputed claims to territory was to create a desire for prompt 
settlement so that each Power could be assured of its own, without the trouble or 
cost of further defending it. Great Britain was already entangled with the United 
States on the southern side of her claims on the north-west coast. That Agreement 
she must adhere to, but she was wholly unwilling to postpone a definite understand - 
ing with Russia as to the northern limit of her claims on the north-west coast. 
45 Hence a permanent Treaty was desired, and in both Treaties the ‘‘ ten-year” 
feature was recognized—in the VIIth Article of the British Treaty and in the 
IVth Article of the American Treaty. But neither in the correspondence nor in the 
personal conferences that brought about the Agreement was there a single hint that 
the settlement was to include anything else whatever than the north-west coast on 
the Pacific Ocean, south of the 60th parallel of north latitude. 
Fortunately, however, it is not necessary for the United States to rely on this sug- 
gestive definition of the north-west coast, or upon the historical facts above given. 
It is easy to prove from other sources that in the Treaty between the United States 
and Russia the coast referred to was that which I have defined as the “north-west 
coast” on the Pacific Ocean south of 60° north latitude, or, asthe Russians for a long 
time believed it, 59° 30’. We have in the Department of State the originals of the 
Protocols between our Minister at St. Petersburgh, Mr. Henry Middleton, and Count 
Nesselrode, of Russia, who negotiated the Treaty of 1824. I quote, as I have quoted 
in my note of the 30th June, a Memorandum submitted to Count Nesselrode by Mr. 
Middleton as a part of the 4th Protocol: 
“Now, it is clear, according to the facts established, that neither Russia nor any 
other European Power has the right of dominion upon the Continent of America 
between the 50th and 60th degrees of north latitude. 
“Still less has she the dominion of the adjacent maritime territory, or of the sea 
which washes these coasts, a dominion which is only accessory to the territorial 
dominion. 
“Therefore, she has not the right of exclusion or of admission on these coasts, nor 
in these seas, which are free seas. 
“The right of navigating all the free seas belongs, by natural law, to every inde- 
pendent nation, and even constitutes an essential part of this independence. 
‘The United States have exercised navigation in the seas, and commerce upon the 
coasts above mentioned, from the time of their independence; and they have a per- 
fect right to this navigation and to this commerce, and they can only be deprived of 
it by their own act or by a Convention.” 
Mr. Middleton declares that Russia had not the right of dominion ‘ upon the Con- 
tinent of America between the 50th and 60th degrees of north latitude.” Still less has she 
the dominion of ‘‘ the adjacent maritime territory or the sea which washes these coasts.” 
He further declares that Russia had not the ‘‘right of exclusion or of admission on 
these coasts, nor in these seas, which are free seas” —that is, the coast and seas between 
the 50th and 60th degrees of north latitude on the body of the continent. 
The following remark of Mr. Middleton deserves special attention: 
“The right of navigating all the free seas belongs, by natural law, to every inde- 
pendent nation, and even constitutes an essential part of this independence.” 
This earnest protest by Mr. Middleton, it will be noted, was against the Ukase of 
Alexander which proposed to extend Russian sovereignty over the Pacific Ocean as 
far south as the 51st degree of latitude, at which point, as Mr. Adams reminded the 
Russian Minister, that ocean is 4,000 miles wide. It is also to be specially noted 
that Mr. Middleton’s double reference to ‘‘the free seas” would have no meaning 
whatever if he did not recognize that freedom on certain seas had been restricted. 
He could not have used the phrase if he had regarded all seas in that region as 
“free seas.” 
In answer to my former reference to these facts (in my note of the 30th June) 
Lord Salisbury makes this plea: 
‘‘Mr. Blaine states that when Mr. Middleton declared that Russia had no right of 
exclusion on the coasts of America between the 50th and 60th degrees of north lati- 
