Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/188

174 originally proposed by Mr. Bayard in 1887, of international cooperation.

While maintaining the freedom of the seas, the United States has also contended for the free navigation of the natural channels by which they are connected.

On this principle it led in the movement that brought about the abolition in 1857 of the dues levied by Denmark on vessels and cargoes passing through the sound and belts which form a passage from the North Sea into the Baltic. These dues, which were justified by the Danish government on the ground of immemorial usage, sanctioned by a long succession of treaties, and of the benefit conferred on commerce by the policing and lighting of the waters, bore heavily on commerce, and the United States, after repeatedly remonstrating, at length gave notice that it would no longer submit to them. This action led to the calling of a conference in Europe. The United States declined to take part in it, but afterwards co-operated, by a treaty with Denmark, in giving effect to the plan under which the dues were capitalized and removed. An artificial channel necessarily involves special consideration; but, reasoning by analogy, Mr. Clay, as Secretary of State, declared that if a canal to unite the Pacific and Atlantic oceans should ever be constructed, "the benefits of it ought not to be exclusively appropriated to any one nation, but should be extended to all parts of the globe upon the payment of a just compensation or reasonable tolls." This principle was approved by the Senate in 1835, and by the House of Representatives in 1839, and was incorporated in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty in 1850. It is now embodied in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty for the neutralization of the interoceanic canal.

It is not doubted that rivers such as the Hudson and the Mississippi, which are navigable only within the territory of one country, are subject to that country's exclusive control. But with regard to rivers which are navigable within two or more countries the principle of free navigation, consecrated in the acts of the Congress of Vienna, has been consistently advocated by the United States, and has been embodied in various forms in several of its treaties. When the British government sought to deny to the inhabitants of the United States the commercial use of the river St. Lawrence, Henry Clay, as Secretary of State, appealed to the regulations of the Congress of Vienna, which should, he declared, "be regarded only as the spontaneous homage of man to the superior wisdom of the permanent Lawgiver of the Universe, by delivering His great works from the artificial shackles and selfish contrivances to which they have been arbitrarily and unjustly subjected." The free navigation of the St. Lawrence