occupancy of those posts, by
stipulating as a permanent condition, a free passage for their goods
across our portages without paying any duty.

Another article of the new treaty which is connected with the provisions
of the treaty of 1783 deserves consideration; I mean what relates to the
Mississippi. At the time when the navigation of that river to its mouth
was by the treaty of peace declared to be common to both nations, Great
Britain communicated to America a right which she held by virtue of the
treaty of 1763, and as owner of the Floridas; but since that cession to
the United States, England has ceded to Spain her claim on the Floridas,
and does not own at the present time an inch of ground, either on the
mouth or on any part of that river. Spain now stands in the place of
Great Britain, and by virtue of the treaty of 1783 it is to Spain and
America, and not to England and America, that the navigation of the
Mississippi is at present to be common. Yet, notwithstanding this change
of circumstances, we have repeated that article of the former treaty in
the late one, and have granted to Great Britain the additional privilege
of using our ports on the eastern side of the river, without which, as
they own no land thereon, they could not have navigated it. Nor is this
all. Upon a supposition that the Mississippi does not extend so far
northward as to be intersected by a line drawn due west from the Lake of
the Woods, or, in other words, upon a supposition that Great Britain has
not a claim even to touch the Mississippi, we have agreed, not upon what
will be the boundary line, but that we will hereafter negotiate to
settle that line. Thus leaving to future negotiation what should have
been finally settled by the treaty itself, in the same manner as all
other differences were, is calculated for the sole purpose, either of
laying the foundation of future disputes, or of recognizing a claim in
Great Britain on the waters of the Mississippi, even if their boundary
line leaves to the southward the sources of that river. Had not that
been the intention of Great Britain the line would have been settled at
once by the treaty, according to either of the two only rational ways of
doing it in conformity to the treaty of 1783, that is to say, by
agreeing that the line should run from the northernmost sources of the
Mississippi, either directly to the western extremity of the Lake of the
Woods, or northwardly till it intersected the