SEC. 10. A nation's exclusive jurisdiction, by virtue of its sovereignty, extends over its maritime curtilage, if it be a maritime State. Riparian nations bordering a navigable river or lake, have a common right of navigation for commercial purposes, even though one nation may own both banks of a part of the river or of a strait, leading to the ocean, or from lake to lake. (Von Martens, 160. Wheat. Hist. L. N. 498-501, 508, 552, 553.)

The United States asserted this doctrine with regard to the Mississippi, and secured it by treaty with Spain. (8 U. S. St. L. 140, art. 4.)

Henry Clay, Secretary of State, in his instructions of 1826 to the American minister at London, insisted on this doctrine as applicable to the St. Lawrence. He affirmed, that as a riparian nation, our republic had a natural right to the free navigation of that river. (Am. Ann. Reg. vol. 2, pp. 137–139, 141–144. Wheat. Int. L. P. 2, c. 4, § 19.) And if the St. Lawrence were in fact navigable from the United States by sea-going vessels, he was unquestionably right.

The reciprocity treaty has opened forever to Americans the navigation of this noble river.

The natural right of riparian States and nations to the common navigation of navigable seas, rivers, bays and straits, connecting seas, oceans and great lakes, is generally acknowledged and practiced by all civilized nations. (1b. 3 Am. Ann. Reg. 397. Wheat. Hist. L. N. 478—506, 547, 552, 553, 564, 567. Wheat. Int. L. P. 2, c. 4, §§ 16-19.)

The treaty of Russia with the Porte of 1829, and our treaty with that power in 1830, the treaties of Vienna of 1815, our treaty with Great Britain of 1842, and our Oregon treaty with that power, and the treaty of the great powers at the Paris Congress of 1856, all affirm these doctrines. In Europe and America the principle

is maintained of the freedom of straits and seas, and great navigable rivers, to the peaceful commerce of all nations with the riparian nations that border them. Hence it seems that a riparian nation, owning even both shores at the mouth of a great river like the St. Lawrence, the La Plata, the Amazon, the Parana or the Danube, has no right to levy tolls upon or impede maritime commerce with any other riparian State or nation.

NATURALIZATION.

SEC. 11. Another right of national sovereignty is found in a nation's authority to incorporate persons born out of its jurisdiction into it by naturalization. This is a dictate of nature, and has been practiced by the aborigines of America from a remote period to the present time. Our constitution and laws allow naturalization. (Wheat. Int. L. P. 2, c. 2, § 6.)

The laws of France provide for naturalization, upon the principle upon which our law reposes. (See Les Douze Codes, liv. pre. ch. 1st, and 2d Code Napoleon, London ed. of 1827, pp. 5, 6.) Great Britain has asserted in her municipal laws a contrary principle, and employed her great navy to establish by force the serfdom of every man born within the jurisdiction of that government. She has, by her armed ships, unlawfully stopped merchant vessels of other nations, and even their ships of war, on the high seas, and taken by violence such sailors from on board as a British officer chose to call Englishmen, who were often Americans, and compelled them to enter the naval service of Britain and fight her battles. The bare statement of this doctrine, alike shocking to humanity and condemned by the law of nations, is sufficient to show that it rests upon force, and not upon any legal or moral principle. This assertion of perpetual allegiance is a feudal principle of the dark ages, based upon the idea that every

man was born the slave for life of some liege lord, a proposition that Christianity and public law have forever repudiated. Vattel correctly lays down the law of nations in these words: "A nation, or the sovereign who represents it, may grant to a foreigner the quality of citizen, by admitting him into the body of the political society. This is called naturalization." The fundamental law of each nation regulates the mode and terms of naturalization, and it may confer on aliens all the political rights of the State, or they may be disqualified for holding certain offices, as in the United States, the Presidency, for example. (Vattel, B. 1, c. 19, § 214.) The French code, above cited, conforms to the law of nations as laid down by Vattel. It is in these words: "La qualité de Français de perdra; par la naturalization acquise en pays étranger." The Constitution of the United States confers on Congress the power "to establish a uniform rule of naturalization." (Art. 1, § 8.)

Nature teaches us that naturalization of foreigners is a sovereign right of every nation, and that often it is a duty. (Wheat. Int. L. P. 2, c. 2, § 6.) The United States have a territory sufficient to accommodate five hundred millions of people. Europe and parts of Asia are crowded with population; and in England the soil has fallen into the hands of a few proprietors, so that the great body of the Anglo Saxons, common English people, have been deprived of any share in the soil of Britain. Our republic, having a vast, vacant or uncultivated country, offers to restore to every man, at a trifling price, his share of the earth, his patrimony by the gift of God. All the unprovided families of Europe or Asia may each obtain in our republic a fine farm of one hundred and sixty acres for two hundred dollars, equal to forty pounds sterling, or one thousand francs, with a right of citizenship in our country, whose fundamental maxim is, that all men are born free and equal, and possess the inherent and inalienable right of self-government.

It is the right and duty of our republic to afford, in her vast territory, an asylum for the crowded or oppressed people of all nations. Expatriation is a natural right, and it has so been considered by Franklin, Washington and all our statesmen. The humane principles of our government in reference to naturalizing poor foreigners, and furnishing them with fee simple farms cheaply, were well set forth by Daniel Webster, Secretary of State of the United States, in a letter to Lord Ashburton, the British Minister at Washington, in August, 1842. (Wheat. Hist. L. N. pp. 741, 742. 4 Spark's Life of Franklin, 460. Lord Bacon's Works, Am. ed. 37.)

Naturalization is, therefore, a clear right of sovereignty. William L. Marcy, Secretary of State, in his letter to M. Molina, well says:

"The right of expatriation is not, I believe, withheld from the citizens of any free government, or from residents under its jurisdiction.

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"The laws of neither country, (Costa Rica and the United States,) it is presumed, have conferred the authority to examine into the motives which may lead any one to exercise the right of expatriation.

"The liberty to go where hopes of better fortune may entice them, belongs to freemen, and no free government withholds it. It is, therefore, no cause of complaint against a neutral country that persons in the exercise of this right have left it, and have afterwards been found in the ranks of the army of a belligerent State."

EUROPEAN COLONIZATION AND INTERFERENCE IN THE

AMERICAN HEMISPHERE.

SEC. 12. The right of colonizing the unappropriated parts of the earth, not included within the bounds of any organized government, also belongs to the sovereignty of every nation. It has been practiced from the palmy

days of Tyre to the present time. Carthage was a colony of Tyre. When Columbus discovered America it opened a great continent to Europeans, and they sought, by prior discovery and occupation, to appropriate as much as possible of it. This right cannot reach any wild lands within the limits of any organized State. It is of necessity confined to such parts of the earth as may be uncultivated, or unappropriated by any organized State. As the earth belonged to the Lord, who has given it to the whole family of man, as Revelation declares, no individual, by the law of nature, can secure a prior right to any given portion of it, except by actual cultivation or appropriation. Nomadic tribes, therefore, have only a qualified possessory right, which ought, in all cases, to be extinguished by purchase; but they have no natural right to exclude the rest of mankind from the occupancy and cultivation of a soil they refuse to subdue and improve. The natural right of every man and of all nations is to appropriate a reasonable portion of the earth, to subdue and till it, in order to provide sustenance and the comforts of life. No man has a right, by the law of nature, to prohibit another from enjoying this right, provided all inclosed, cultivated or appropriated tracts of land are not interfered with. (Am. Ann. Reg. for 1827-1829, part 2d, p. 44.)

Where, however, an uncultivated country is included within the territory of any civilized nation, no title can be acquired to it except according to the lex loci, and no foreign government has any right to send colonists to occupy it.

In the United States a great principle of public law was proclaimed by President Monroe, with the approbation of John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Thomas Jefferson, of Congress, and of the American people, in the President's Message to Congress in Decem