ow in session and approaching the
consummation of their labors. This final disposal of one of the most
painful topics of collision between the United States and Great Britain
not only affords an occasion of gratulation to ourselves, but has had
the happiest effect in promoting a friendly disposition and in softening
asperities upon other objects of discussion; nor ought it to pass
without the tribute of a frank and cordial acknowledgment of the
magnanimity with which an honorable nation, by the reparation of their
own wrongs, achieves a triumph more glorious than any field of blood can
ever bestow.

The conventions of 3d July, 1815, and of 20th October, 1818, will expire
by their own limitation on the 20th of October, 1828. These have
regulated the direct commercial intercourse between the United States
and Great Britain upon terms of the most perfect reciprocity; and they
effected a temporary compromise of the respective rights and claims to
territory westward of the Rocky Mountains. These arrangements have been
continued for an indefinite period of time after the expiration of the
above-mentioned conventions, leaving each party the liberty of
terminating them by giving twelve months' notice to the other. The
radical principle of all commercial intercourse between independent
nations is the mutual interest of both parties. It is the vital spirit
of trade itself; nor can it be reconciled to the nature of man or to the
primary laws of human society that any traffic should long be willingly
pursued of which all the advantages are on one side and all the burdens
on the other. Treaties of commerce have been found by experience to be
among the most effective instruments for promoting peace and harmony
between nations whose interests, exclusively considered on either side,
are brought into frequent collisions by competition. In framing such
treaties it is the duty of each party not simply to urge with unyielding
pertinacity that which suits its own interest, but to concede liberally
to that which is adapted to the interest of the other. To accomplish
this, little more is generally required than a simple observance of the
rule of reciprocity, and were it possible for the statesmen of one
nation by stratagem and management to obtain from the weakness or
ignorance of another an overreaching treaty, such a compact would prove
an incentive to war rather than a bond of peace. Our conventions with
Great Britain are founded upon the