CORRESPONDENCE 401 



before acquired possession of territories asserted to depend on other titles than those 

 which Great Britain could confer. The treaty of Ghent, indeed, adverted, as a fact 

 of possession, to certain boundaries of the United States which were specified in 

 the treaty of 1783; but surely it will not be contended that therefore the treaty 

 of 1783 was not considered at an end. 



It is justly stated by the American Minister that the United States did not need 

 a new grant of the boundary line. The war did not arise out of a contested boundary; 

 and Great Britain, therefore, by the act of treating with the United States, recognized 

 that nation in its former dimensions, excepting so far as the jus belli had interfered 

 with them; and it was the object of the treaty of Ghent to cede such rights to terri- 

 tory as the JM belli had conferred. 



Still less does the free navigation of the Mississippi, as demanded by the British 

 negotiators at Ghent, in any manner express or imply the non-abrogation of the treaty 

 of 1783 by the subsequent war. It was brought forward by them as one of many 

 advantages which they were desirous of securing to Great Britain; and if in the first 

 instance demanded without equivalent, it left it open to the negotiators of the United 

 States to claim for their Government, in the course of their conferences, a correspond- 

 ing benefit. The American Minister will recollect that propositions of this nature 

 were at one time under discussion, and that they were only abandoned at the time that 

 Great Britain relinquished her demand to the navigation of the Mississippi. If, 

 then, the demand on the part of Great Britain can be supposed to have given any 

 weight to the present argument of the United States, the abandomnent of that 

 demand must have effectually removed it. 



It is by no means unusual for treaties containing recognitions and acknowledg- 

 ments of title, in the nature of perpetual obligation, to contain, likewise, grants of 

 privileges liable to revocation. The treaty of 1783, like many others, contained 

 provisions of different characters — some in their own nature irrevocable, and others 

 of a temporary nature. If it be thence inferred that, because some advantages specified 

 in that treaty would not be put an end to by the war, therefore all the other advantages 

 were intended to be equally permanent, it must first be shown that the advantages 

 themselves are of the same, or at least of a similar character; for the character of 

 one advantage recognized or conceded by treaty can have no connection with the 

 character of another, though conceded by the same instrument, unless it arises out 

 of a strict and necessary connection between the advantages themselves. But what 

 necessary connection can there be between a right to independence and a liberty to 

 fish within British jurisdiction, or to use British territory? Liberties within British 

 limits are as capable of being exercised by a dependent, as by an independent State, 

 and cannot, therefore, be the necessary consequence of independence. 



The independence of a State is that which cannot be correctly said to be granted 

 by a treaty, but to be acknowledged by one. In the treaty of r783, the independence 

 of the United States was certainly acknowledged, not merely by the consent to make 

 the treaty, but by the previous consent to enter into the provisional articles executed 

 in November, 1782. The independence might have been acknowledged, without 

 either the treaty or the provisional articles; but, by whatever mode acknowledged, 

 the acknowledgment is, in its own nature, irrevocable. A power of revoking, or 

 even of modifying it, would be destructive of the thing itself; and, therefore, all such 

 power is necessarily renounced when the acknowledgment is made. The war could 

 not put an end to it, for the reason justly assigned by the American Minister, because 

 a nation could not forfeit its sovereignty by the act of exercising it; and for the further 



