The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-20 00:00:00

THE NAVIGATION oy THE ST. LAWRENCE.

A like unfriendly disposition has been manifested on the
part of Canada in the maintenance of a claim of right to
exclude the citizens of the United States from the naviga-

tion of the St. Lawrence. This river constitutes a natural
outlet to the ocean for eight States, with an aggregate
population of about £17,600,000 inhabitants, and with an
aggregate tonnage of 661,367 tons upon the waters which
discharge into it. The foreign commerce of our ports on
these waters is open to British competition, and the major
part of it is done in British bottoms.
If the American seamen be excluded from this natural
avenue to the ocean, the monopoly of the direct commerce
of the lake ports with the Atlantic would be in foreign
hands, their vessels on transatlantic voyages having an
access to our lake ports, which would be denied to Ameri-
can vessels on similar voyages. To state such a proposi-
tion is to refute its justice.
During the Administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams
Mr. Clay unanswerably demonstrated the natural right of
the citizens of the United States to the navigation of this
river, claiming that the Act of the Congress of
Vienna, in opening the Rhine and other rivers to all
nations, sheared the judgment of European jurists and
statesmen that the inhabitants of a country, through
which a navigable river passes, have a natural right to
enjoy the navigation of that river to and into the son,
even though passing through the territories of another
Power. This right does not exelnde the coequal right of
the sovereign possessing the territory through which the
river debouches Into the sea, to make such regulations,
relative to the police of the navigation as may be reason-
ably necessary ; but those regulations should be framed
in a liberal spirit of comity, and should not impose need-
lose burdens upon the commerce which has the right of
transit. It has been found, in practice, more advantageons
to arrange these regulations by mutual agreement. The
United States are ready to make any reasonable arrange-
ment as to the police of the St. Lawrence which may be
suggested by Great Britain.

If the claim made by Mr. Clay Was just when the porn

lation of the States bordering on the shores of the lakes
was only 3,400,000, it now derives greater force and
equity from the increased population, Wealth, production,
and tonnage of the States on the Canadian frontier.
Since Mr. Clay advanced his argument in behalf of our
right, the principle for which he contended has been fre-
quently, and by various nations, recognised by law or by
treaty, and has been extended to several- other great
rivers. By the treaty concluded at Mayence, in 1831, the
Rhine was declared free from the point where it is first
navigable into the sea. By the convention between Spain
and Portugal, concluded in 1835, the navigation
of the Douro, throughout its whole extent, was made
free for the subjects of both Crowns. In 1853 the Argen-
tine Confederation, by treaty threw open the free naviga-
tion of the Parana and the Uruguay to the merchant
vessels of all nations. In 1856 the Crimean war was closed
by a treaty which provided for the free navigation of the
Danube. In 1858 Bolivia, by treaty, declared that it
regarded the rivers Amazon and La Plata, in accordance
with fixed principles of national law, as highways or
channels, opened by nature, for the commerce of all
nations. In 1859 the Paraguay was made free
by treaty, and in December, 1856, the Emperor
of Brazil, by imperial decree, declared the Ama-
zon to be open to the frontier of Brazil
to the merchant ships of all nations. The greatest living
British authority on this subject, while asserting the
abstract right of the British claim, says : "It seems diffi-
cult to deny that Great Britain may ground her refusal
upon strict lugs, but it is equally difficult to deny, first,
that in so doing she exercises harshly an exteme and hard
law ; secondly, that her conduct with respect to the navi-
gation of the St. Lawence is in glaring and discreditable
inconsistency with her conduct with respect to the navi-
gation of the Mississippi. On the ground that she
possessed a email domain, in which the Mississippi took
its rise, she insisted on the right to navigate the entire
volume of its waters., On the ground that she possesses
both banks of the St. Lawenco, where it die-
embogues itself into the sea, she denies to the United
States the right of navigation, though about one-half of
the waters of Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Superior,
and the whole of Lake Michigan, through which the river
flows, are the property of the United States."
The whole nation is interested in securing cheap trans-

portation from the agricultural States of the West to the
Atlantic seaboard. To the citizens of those States it
secures a greater return for their labour ; to the inhabit-
ants of the seaboard it affords cheaper food ; to the nation
an increase in the annual surplus of wealth. It is hoped
that the Government of Great Britain will see the justice
o f abandoning the narrow and inconsistent claim to which
her Canadian provinces have urged her adherence.