ADDENDUM. 



411 



" Wheaton is very clear upon this point. Let him answer : 



" ' As to straits and sounds,' says he, ' bounded on both sides by the 

 territory of the same State, so narrow as to be commanded by cannon- 

 shot from both shores, and communicating from one sea to another, we 

 have already seen that the territorial sovereignty may be limited by 

 the right of other nations to navigate the seas thus connected. The 

 physical power which the State bordering on both sides the sound or 

 strait has, of appropriating its waters, and of excluding other nations 

 from their use, is here encountered by the moral obstacle arising from 

 the right of other nations to communicate with each other. If the straits 

 of Gibraltar, for example, were bordered on both sides by the posses- 

 sions of the same nation, and if they were sufficiently narrow to be com- 

 manded by cannon-shot from both shores, this passage would not be 

 the less freely open to all nations, since the navigation both of the At- 

 lantic ocean and of the Mediterranean sea is free to all. Thus, it has 

 already been stated that the navigation of the Dardanelles and the Bos- 

 phorus, by which the Mediterranean and Black seas are connected to- 

 gether, is free to all nations, subject to those regulations which are in- 

 dispensably necessary for the security of the Ottoman empire.' — 

 Wheaton' 's Elements of International Laiv, p. 240. 



"Now, Bolivia and Ecuador have both established the freedom of the 

 seas — that is the term used by President Belzu — upon their Amazonian 

 waters, as Russia did upon the Black sea, by her acquisitions along its 

 shores, and as the Baltic powers did before her. These republics have 

 made a free gift of their waters to commerce, as the nations of the Bal- 

 tic and Black seas did ; and they have brought the Amazon, in Brazil, 

 exactly within the case so well put by this distinguished jurist. 



" The international code, like all others of human origin, requires oc- 

 casional revision; for the principles which have been laid down in 

 Europe with regard to seas, rivers, and other questions, have not always 

 been either sanctioned or acquiesced in on this side of the water. 



"We have filed in the great international court our bill of exceptions 

 to the European doctrine concerning blockades, the right of search, 

 closed seas, and other points, as to which the grand inquest of the 

 world at large — the people, not kings — have pronounced judgment ; and 

 their verdict is, we are right. 



" Hence the stronger necessity and greater propriety in laying down 

 now the international doctrine which ought to obtain with regard to the 

 Amazon. 



"In 1821, Russia claimed the exclusive right of navigating the North 

 Pacific ocean, upon the ground that she owned portions both of the 



