A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 2: John Quincy Adams
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 2: John Quincy Adams
Adams, John Quincy, 1767-1848; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
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 principles of reciprocity. The
commercial intercourse between the two countries is greater in magnitude
and amount than between any two other nations on the globe. It is for
all purposes of benefit or advantage to both as precious, and in all
probability far more extensive, than if the parties were still
constituent parts of one and the same nation. Treaties between such
States, regulating the intercourse of peace between them and adjusting
interests of such transcendent importance to both, which have been found
in a long experience of years mutually advantageous, should not be
lightly canceled or discontinued. Two conventions for continuing in
force those above mentioned have been concluded between the
plenipotentiaries of the two Governments on the 6th of August last, and
will be forthwith laid before the Senate for the exercise of their
constitutional authority concerning them.
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