Litchfield enquirer., 1870-12-15

ec0tloh or thelf voyages to and from said fishing grounds; and any vessel of the Uni ted States which shall contravene this reg
 ulation, may be seized. condemned and
 confiscated with her cargo" This proposi tlon, which Is identical with the construct
 ion now put upon the language of the con
 vention, was emphaticallv rejected by the
 American Commission, and thereupon was
 abandoned by the British plenipotentiarie:
 and the article (one) as it stands in the con
 vention, was substituted If, however, il
 be said that this claim is founded on pro
 vincial or colonial statutes, and not upon
 the convention. this government cannot but
 regard them as unfriendly and in contra tyention of the spirit, if not of the letter ot
 the treaty, for the faithful execution ot
 which the Imperial government is alone res
 ponsible. Anticipating that an attemp, may possibly be made by the Canadian au
 thorities, in the coming season, to repeat
 their unneighborly act towards our fisher
 men, recommend you to confer upon the Executive the power to suspend, by proc
 lamatlon. the operation of the laws author L. izing the transit of goods, wares and mer
 chandise in bond across the territory of the United States to Canada; and further, should such an extreme measure become ne- cessary,t to suspend the operation of any laws whereby the vessels of the Dominion oi Canada are permitted to enter the waters of the United States. .. ..'
 A like unfriendly disposition has been manifested on the part of Canada in the maintenance of claim of the right to e1- clude the citizens of the United States from l the navigation of the St. Lawrence, This 1 river constitutes natural outlet to the ocean for eight states with aD aggregate population of about 17. .60O, 900 inhabitant ts, and with an aggregate tonnage of 661, ,367 tons upon the waters which discharge into l 1t.
 | 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 ex- cluded from this natural avenue to the 1 ocean the monopoly of the direct commerce of the lake ports with the Atlantic would be in foreign hands; their vessels on trans Atlantic voyages having an access to our lake ports which would be denied ta Amer I ican vessels on similar voyages.
 To state such proposition is to refute its justice. During the administration of Mir. John Quincy Adams. Mir. Clay un- occasionally demonstrated the national right of the citizens of the United States to tue navigation of this river, claiming that the action of the Congress of Vienna, in opening the Rhine and other rivers to all nations, showed the judgment of Euro pean jurists and statesmen that the inhab- of a country through which Q navagable river passes, have natural right to enjoy the navigation of that river to and into the sea, even though passing through the ter ritories of another power. t"t
 This right does not exclude tue co-equal rirht 0e tha SnvnraiOn fnSaassinu ha tO- JurUugu wiItua. the sea to make such regulations relative to the police of the navigation as may be reasonably necessary, but those regulations should be framed in liberal spirit of conf ty, and should not impose needless burdens upon the commerce which has the right of transit. It has been found in practice more advantageous to arrange these regu- lations by mutual agreement.
 The United States are ready to make any reasonable arrangement as to the police of the St. Lawrence which may be suggested by Great Britain. If the claim made by MT. Clay was just when the population of the states bordering on the shores of the lakes was only 3,40O,00O, it now derives greater force and equity from the increased population, wealth, production and tonnage of the states on the Canadian frontier. Since MT. Clay advanced his argument in behalf of our right the principle for which he contended has been frequently and by various nations recognised by law or treaty, and has been extended to several other great rivers. ,s. :. ..-...3tt .Ht. .. By the treaty concluded at Mayence in 1881 the Rhine was declared free from the point where it is first navigable unto the sea- By the convention between Spain and Portugal, concluded in 1885, the navigation of the Douro throughout It's whole extent was made free for the subjects of both crowns. In 1853 the Argentine Confedera- l tion by treaty threw open the free Laviga. tion of the Parana and Uruguay to the mer- chant vessels of all natious.
 | In 1856 the Crimean war was closed by a treaty which provided for the free navIga- tion of the Danube. In 1858 Bolivia, by treaty, declared that it regarded the Anna zon and La Plata, in accordance with fixed principles of international law, as highways or channels opened by nature for the com merce of all nations. h 1859 the Paraguay was made free by treaty, aud in December, 1866. the Emperor sot Brazll, by imperial decree, declared the Amazon 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 1 the abstract right of the British claim, says
 ss It seems difficult to deuy that Great Brit ain may ground her refusal upon strict law but it IS equally difficult to deny, first, that in so doing she exercises harshly an extreme and hard law; and secondly, that her con duct with respect to the navigation of the St. Lawrence, is Tn glaring aud discredita
 ble inconsistency with her conduct with respect to the navigation of the Mississippi l On the ground that she possessed smal domain in which the Mississippi took its rise, she insisted on the right to navigate tthe entire volume of it's waters. On the I ground that she possesses both banks o | the St. Lawrence where in disemoogue' itself into the sea, she denies to the United States the right of navigation though abou one-half of the waters of Lakes Ontario ! Erie, Huron and Superior and the whol'
 of Lake Michigan, through which the live
 flows. are the property of the United States The whole nation is interested in securing cheap transportation from the agriculture
 states of the West to the Atlantic seaboard To the citizens of those states it secures greater return for their labor; to the inhab , tants of the seaboaId it affords cheape food to the nation an increase in the al nual surplus of wealth. It isehoped tha the government of Great Britain will se hthe justice of abandoning the narrow an inconsistent claim to which her Canadia