right of sovereignty, could, at best only be supposed to spring from the social compact: whereas the right of navigating the river, is a right of nature, pre-existent in point of time, not necessary to have been surrendered up for any purpose of the common good, and unsusceptible of annihilation. There is no principle of national law, and universal justice, upon which the provisions of the Vienna treaties are founded, that does not apply to sustain the right of the people of the United States to navigate the St. Lawrence. The relations between the soil and the water, and those of man to both, form the eternal basis of this right. These relations are too intimate and powerful to be separated. A nation deprived of the use of the water flowing through its soil, would see itself stripped of many of the most beneficial uses of the soil itself; so that its right to use the water, and freely to pass over it, becomes an indispensable adjunct to its territorial rights. It is a means so interwoven with the end, that to disjoin them would be to destroy the end. Why should the water impart its fertility to the earth, if the products of the latter are to be left to perish upon the shores ?"

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"Finally, the United States feel justified in claiming the navigation of this river, on the ground of paramount interest and necessity to their citi

zens-on that of natural right, founded on this necessity, and felt and acknowledged in the practice of mankind, and under the sanction of the best expounders of the laws of nations. Their claim is to its full and free navigation from its source to the sea, without impediment or obstruction of any kind. It was thus that Great Britain claimed, and had the navigation of the Mississippi, by the seventh article of the treaty of Paris, of 1763, when the mouth and lower shores of that river were held by another power. The claim, whilst necessary to the United States, is not injurious to Great Britain, nor can it violate any of her just rights."

The British reply to this protocol of our government denied that the United States had a perfect right to the free navigation of the St. Lawrence, and asserted that the stipulation of the Congress of Vienna was in this manner : "The powers whose states are separated or crossed by the same navigable river engage to regulate by common consent, all that regards its navigation." They insisted that our right was an imperfect one.

Mr. Clay, reviewing this illiberal British state paper, in his letter to Mr. Gallatin, our envoy in June, 1826, fully replied to it. The following are extracts from this able paper, giving fully the liberal and just views of President Adams and the distinguished Secretary of State :

"The navigation of the St. Lawrence from the territories of the United States to the sea.”

"The government of the United States have seen, with very great surprise and regret, the manner in which the assertion of this right of navigation, through Mr. Rush, during the former negotiation, was met and resisted by the British Plenipotentiaries. The President has respectfully and deliberately examined and considered the British paper which was delivered in by them, and which is annexed to the protocol of the 24th conference, and he has been altogether unable to discern, in its reasons or its authorities, any thing to impeach the right of the United States, or to justify the confidence with which the exclusive pretensions of Great Britain are brought forward and maintained. What is the right claimed by the United States? The North American lakes are among the largest inland seas known on the globe. They extend from about the 41st to the 49th degree of north latitude, stretch over sixteen degrees of longitude, and thus present a surface, altogether, of upwards of eighty-three thousand square miles. Eight states of this Union, (three of them among the largest in it,) and one territory, border on them. A population already exceeding two millions, and augmenting beyond all example, is directly and deeply interested in their navigation.

They are entirely enclosed within the territories of the United States and Great Britain, and the right to their navigation, common to both, is guarantied by the faith of treaties, and rests upon the still higher authority of the law of nature. These great lakes are united by but one natural outlet to the ocean, the navigation of which is common to all mankind. That outlet along a considerable part of its course, forms a common boundary between the territories of the United States and Great Britain, and to that extent the right of navigating it is enjoyed by both. The United States contend that they are invested with a right to pass from those lakes, the incontested privilege of navigating which they exercise, through that natural outlet, to the ocean-the right of navigating which, by all nations, none presumes to question. The right asserted, in other words, is, that their vessels shall be allowed, without molestation, to pursue their trackless way on the bosom of these vast waters, gathered together, in no inconsiderable degree, in their own territory, through that great channel of the St. Lawrence, which nature itself has beneficently supplied, to the ocean, in which they are finally deposited. They ask that the interests of the greater population, and the more extensive and fertile country above, shall not be sacrificed, in an arbitrary exertion of pow.

er, to the jealousy and rivalry of a smaller population, inhabiting a more limited and less productive country below. The United States do not claim a right of entry into British ports, situated on the St. Lawrence, against British will, and to force their productions into the consumption of British subjects. They claim only the right of passing those ports, and transporting their productions to foreign markets or to their own, open and willing to receive them; and, as incident and necessary to the enjoyment of that right, they claim the privileges of stoppage and transhipment, at such places within the British jurisdiction, and under such reasonable and equitable regulations, as may be prescribed or agreed upon.”

"Such is the right, the assertion of which shocked the sensibility of the British Plenipotentiaries. The impartial world will judge whether surprise most naturally belonged to the denial or to the assertion of the right."

"If the St. Lawrence is regarded a strait, as it ought to be, connecting navigable seas, there would be less controversy. The principle on which the right to navigate straits depends, is that they are accessorial to those seas which they unite, and the right of navigating which is not exclusive, but common to all nations, the right to navigate the seas drawing after it that of pass