414 



ADDENDUM. 



it may be well for her to bear in mind the liberal policy and the marked 

 degree of friendly consideration which this government has ever observed 

 towards her people. A duty in this country of a few cents a pound on 

 Brazilian coffee would touch a popular nerve in that, which would 

 vibrate through every department of the empire, and convey its im- 

 pressions to the throne itself. To provoke such retaliation would be a 

 crime scarcely short of deliberate regicide on this continent. 



"As for the rights of riparian States to rivers that are owned in com- 

 mon, the doctrines held by the United States with regard to the naviga- 

 tion of the Mississippi, when both banks at its mouth were owned by 

 France or Spain, are too well known to require repetition here. Suffice 

 it to say that the American people were not only prepared to maintain 

 that right by force, but they also insisted for a place of free deposite at 

 its mouth — a place where they might load and unload, tranship and 

 deposite, without any fees or charges whatever, save those of wharfage 

 and storage. 



"With regard to the St. Lawrence, the doctrine held by the United 

 States was, that the right of American citizens to use the waters of that 

 river for floating their vessels to and from the sea rested on the same 

 ground and obvious necessity which had been urged to the Mississippi ; 

 that the treaties concluded at the Congress of Vienna, which stipulated 

 that the navigation of the Rhine, the Moselle, the Meuse, and other 

 great rivers of Europe, should be free to all nations, covered this ground; 

 and, finally, that this claim, while its enjoyment was necessary to the 

 development and prosperity of many States of this Union, was not in- 

 jurious to Great Britain, nor could its exercise violate any of her just 

 rights.* 



"This claim was resisted by the British government chiefly on the 

 ground that the St. Lawrence was not navigable from the sea all the 

 way up to the lakes ; that there were connected with it portages, or 

 artificial canals, leading through British territory ; and that the right, if 

 vested in a foreign nation, to use these in war, might prove inconveni- 

 ent, if not injurious, &c. And, furthermore, it was held that the Ameri- 

 can government could not insist upon its claim unless we were prepared 

 to concede to British subjects the rights of free navigation upon the 

 Mississippi river.f 



"In reply to this, it was held that, so far as geographical knowledge 

 then extended, the Mississippi and all of its tributaries laid wholly 

 within the territory of the United States ; that Great Britain had no 



*Pub. Doc No. 43, 1827-'8. 



tCong. Doc. No. 43, 1827-'8. 



