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
American vessels on similar voyages. To state such a proposition 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 showed 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 sea, even though
passing through the territories of another power. This right does not
exclude 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 reasonably necessary;
but those regulations should be framed in a liberal spirit of comity,
and should not impose needless burdens upon the commerce which has the
right of transit.
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