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, 1866,
the Emperor of Brazil 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 the
abstract right of the British claim, says:
It seems difficult to deny that Great Britain 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; secondly, that
her conduct with respect to the navigation of the St. Lawrence is in
glaring and discreditable inconsistency with her conduct with respect
to the navigation of the Mississippi. On the ground that she possessed
a small 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. Lawrence, where it disembogues
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.
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