ould be demanded only in exchange for
some equivalent; and the equivalent to be asked, as was well known,
would be the concession to Great Britain of the free navigation of the
Mississippi River.

The position thus taken by the British Government was plainly
untenable. The treaty of 1782 was only the formal declaration of
certain facts consequent upon the termination of the Revolutionary
war. That treaty recognized three conditions as fully established:
I. The independence of the thirteen Colonies. II. The territorial
limits of the United States. III. The rights and methods of the
common fisheries in Colonial waters which the citizens of the United
States had exercised as British subjects.--The history of the
negotiation and the explicit language of the treaty prove that the
clause touching the fisheries was the recognition of an _existing_
right and not the grant of a _new_ right. The British Government, in
1814, might with equal force and justice have claimed that under this
theory of the abrogation of the treaty of 1782 by war, the recognition
of our independence and the establishment of our boundaries had also
become void. It is a rather curious fact, apparently unknown or
unnoticed by the negotiators of 1814, that as late as 1768 the law
officers of the Crown under the last Ministry of Lord Chatham (to whom
was referred the treaty of 1686 with France, containing certain
stipulations in reference to the Newfoundland fisheries) gave as their
opinion that such clauses were permanent in their character, and that
so far the treaty was valid, notwithstanding subsequent war. The
American negotiators of course refused to admit the principle (that the
war of 1812 had put an end to any provision of the treaty of 1782) or
its application; and the result was that the Treaty of Ghent was signed
and ratified, without any provisions either as to the Fisheries or the
navigation of the Mississippi River,--a position which left the United
States in the full exercise of its rights under the treaty of 1782,
from which it could be excluded only by the exercise of force on the
part of the British Government. There was no danger of force being
applied. The war of 1812 had satisfied Great Britain that she could
gain nothing by going to war with the United States.

Within four years of this time a treaty was negotiated and ratified,
which is altogether the most inexplicable in our diplomatic history.
The war just concluded with