410 



ADDENDUM. 



zon. The treaties of Vienna respecting the great European rivers, and 

 by which the navigation of the Rhine, &c, was declared to be entirely 

 free throughout its whole course, included no case so broad, so compre- 

 hensive, so strongly urgent, as is this of the Amazon. 



"In the next place, the European rivers simply involved questions 

 purely of commercial convenience ; whereas the Amazon not only in- 

 volves these, but actually includes questions of civilization, of settlement, 

 and of the use of vacant lands, which their proprietors have offered in 

 fee-simple to the laboring men of whatever tongue. 



" The valley of the Rhine was already peopled and subdued to culti- 

 vation ; and, in case the people on its upper waters were barred out 

 through it from the sea, the features or the country were not such as 

 to cut them off from all commercial intercourse with the rest of the 

 world. 



"Now, all commercial intercourse between the rest of the world and 

 the Atlantic slopes of those three republics is cut off from the Pacific by 

 the Andes, and there is no other channel to the high seas left except 

 that by way of the Amazon. 



" In the case of the great European rivers, the question, as already 

 stated, was chiefly one of commercial convenience and facility of com- 

 munication ; but with the republics of the Amazon it is. not only a 

 question of commercial convenience, but a question also of national 

 well-being — of commercial necessity — a question of cultivation and set- 

 tlement, of immigration, of civilization, and it is even a question of hu- 

 manity ; for, unless the Amazon be opened to those republics, their 

 territories bordering upon it must forever remain a wilderness, and the 

 people who dwell there must ever be stinted in their enjoyment of the 

 blessings of civilization and refined culture. 



" If the Mediterranean were shut up — if the nations bordering upon 

 it were denied access, through the straits of Gibraltar, to and from the 

 great common highway of all nations — then, and in that contingency, 

 we should have, in a commercial sense, a case precisely similar to that 

 of the Amazon. 



"The Mediterranean powers (that sea being closed) would, we will 

 suppose, do as the three riparian republics of the Amazon have done, 

 viz : proclaim, each for its own ports and waters, the freedom of the 

 seas, and invite all nations to come and trade with them. Would the 

 nation commanding the straits of Gibraltar have the right to do what 

 Brazil has done, less than one month ago, touching this great South 

 American strait, viz : proclaim to the world that no foreign flag should 

 enter there ? 



