50 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
cupation of the Northwestern Territory for so many 
years after we had made peace. I think she was 
wrong in issuing the notorious Orders in Council, and 
in the visitation of our ships and impressment of our 
seamen, which morally constrained us, after exhaust- 
ing all other means of redress, to have recourse to 
war. I think she was wrong in contending that that 
war extinguished the rights of coast fishery assured 
to us by the Treaty of Independence. I think she 
was wrong in the controversy on the subject of colo- 
nial trade, which attained so much prominence during 
the Presidency of John Quincy Adams. I think she 
was wrong in attempting to set up the fictitious Mos. 
quito Kingdom in Central America. I think she was 
wrong in the so-called San Juan Question. And so 
of other subjects of difference between the two Gov. 
ernments. 
Now, it has happened to me, in the course of a long 
public life, to be called on to deal officially, either in 
Congress, in the Cabinet, or at the Bar, with many of 
these points of controversy between the two Govern- 
ments, of which it suffices to mention for example 
three, namely: 1, the Question of British Enlistments; 
2, the Hudson’s Bay Company; and 3, the Alabama 
Claims. 
In regard to the first of these questions, the United 
States, and the persons who administered the Govern- 
ment, were so clearly right that, although the British 
Government, in its Case, improvidently brought into 
controversy at.Geneva, by way of counter-accusation, 
the general conduct of the United States during the 
