Among these I make a distinction in favor of the last, which by its language is declared to be “forever,” and may have been in the nature of an equivalent at the settlement of boundaries between the two powers. But whatever its terms or its origin, it is obvious that it is nothing but a declaration of public law, as always expounded by the United States, and now recognized on the continent of Europe. While pleading with Great Britain, in 1826, for the free navigation of the St. Lawrence, Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, said that “the American Government did not mean to contend for any principle the benefit of which in analogous circumstances it would deny to Great Britain.”[16] During the same year, Mr. Gallatin, our minister in London, when negotiating with Great Britain for the adjustment of boundaries on the Pacific, proposed, that, “if the line should cross any of the branches of the Columbia at points from which they are navigable by boats to the main stream, the navigation of such branches and of the main stream should be perpetually free and common to the people of both nations.”[17] At an earlier day the United States made the same claim with regard to the Mississippi, and asserted, as a general principle, that, “if the right of the upper inhabitants to descend the stream was in any case obstructed, it was an act of force by a stronger society against a weaker, condemned by the judgment of mankind.”[18] By these admissions our country is estopped, even if the public law of the European continent, first declared at Vienna with regard to the Rhine, did not offer an example which we cannot afford to reject. I rejoice to believe that on this occasion we apply to Great Britain the generous rule which from the beginning we have claimed for ourselves.