I have assured you of the willingness of the President to make the ancient treaty between our countries the basis of the proposed one!'

"Not long after the receipt of this letter Mr. Changuion was recalled, and after the lapse of some months Mr. Ten Cate replaced him. One of his early acts was to address a note to the Secretary of State (April 4, 1816), in which he said that he 'conceived it proper to communicate to Mr. Monroe the intentions of the King, his master, respecting the overtures made by Mr. Changuion for the purpose of consolidating the commercial relations between the countries by a renewal or a modification of the treaty of commerce of 1782.

"Mr. Monroe, on the 17th of August, 1816, answered this note. In his answer he says: 'Mr. Changuion having intimated, by order of his Government, that the treaty of 1782 was to be considered, in consequence of the events which have occurred in Holland, as no longer in force, and having proposed also to enter into a new treaty with the United States, this Government has since contemplated that result. It is presumed that the former treaty cannot be revived without being again ratified and exchanged in the form that is usual in such cases, and in the manner prescribed by our Constitution.'

"To the note containing this explicit declaration Mr. Ten Cate returned a long reply on the 16th of September, 1816. As this reply undoubtedly exists in the archives of the legation of His Majesty the King of the Netherlands, in Washington, I content myself with saying that it does not controvert the formal statements of Mr. Monroe. I give the extract which seems most directly to bear upon the point under discussion: His Majesty will undoubtedly be disposed to enter into the views of the American Government with regard to the consolidation by some means of the commercial relations between the two states; but in expectation of these happy results His Majesty may take those measures, on the other hand, which appear best adapted to the circumstances of the moment, and to the interests of the navigation and commerce of his subjects.'

"Thus the status of the treaty of 1782 was apparently disposed of in Washington in accordance with suggestions which the correspondence shows originated in Holland. This disposition would probably have been regarded as final had not the Dutch Government, in the discussions which took place soon after in Holland, denied its liability for the claims already referred to, and asserted, as the ground of discharge from responsibility, that the treaty of 1782 was not in force in Holland at the time when the alleged injuries took place.

"Mr. Monroe had by this time become President, and Mr. John Quincy Adams had succeeded him as Secretary of State. The latter, acting presumably under the directions of the former, finding that the concessions to the wishes of the Dutch Government which the United States was willing to make in 1816 were to be turned in 1818 to the prejudice of citizens of the United States, who had suffered grievous injuries in Holland, endeavored to reopen this question.

"It was in this endeavor that the instructions which you have quoted were written by Mr. John Quincy Adams. They are dated the 10th of August, 1818, but are erroneously printed under the date of August 10, 1824.

"The contention of the United States in this correspondence respecting the treaty of 1782, and respecting the continuity of the political organization with which it was made, is stated concisely in the extract which you have given from this dispatch of Mr. Adams, and I therefore quote it again: The rights and obligations of a nation [the italics are Mr. Adams's] in regard to other states are independent of its internal revolutions of government. On what other ground is it, indeed, that both the Governments of the Netherlands and of the United States now admit that they are still reciprocally bound by the engagements and entitled to claim from each other the benefits of the treaty between the United States and the United Provinces of 1782. If the nations are respectively bound to the stipulations of that treaty now, they were equally bound to them in 1810, when the depredations for which indemnity is now claimed were committed; and when the present King of the Netherlands came to the sovereignty of the country he assumed with it the obligation of repairing the injustices against other nations which had been committed by his predecessors, however free from all participation in them he had been himself.'

"It is understood that the Dutch Government denied these propositions.

"The Baron de Nazel, in his letter of the 14th of June, 1819, to Mr. Everett, speaking of the union of Holland to France, says, 'The politi cal existence of Holland was then terminated; and again, it may easily be shown that Holland had ceased for a long time to form an independent state, under a Government acting for itself and responsible for its conduct.' Again, in the same note, he says, "The principle that the present Government of the Netherlands is responsible for all the acts of the preceding Governments from 1795 to 1813, is one which the King cannot admit without restriction. If it might be admitted in regard to a succession of legitimate Governments, it could not be in regard to a Government established by violence, and which was not itself responsible for the acts to which it was forced by a foreign usurper; that the political nullity of this Government had long been a matter of public notoriety.?' This was understood to mean that there was no recognized responsibility in the new Government for any acts of the Governments of Holland which existed from 1795 to 1813, a period of eighteen years. Unless it means that, it has no meaning.

"Again, the Baron de Nazel, in a note to Mr. Everett, dated the 4th of November, 1819, contends, in answer to a citation made by Mr. Everett from Puffendorf, that the incorporation of an independent state into the territorial domains of another power as a province of that power, works a dissolution of the old body-politic. Referring to the

citation he says: 'It is wished to use it in proof of the position that a nation is not affected by the changes of the Government, and cannot be destroyed but by the dissolution of the body-politic. Puffendorf plainly excepts the case of a state that has become the mere province of another, and this case is precisely that of Holland, by its incorporation with France.'

"Finding the Government of the Netherlands firm in denying the continuing force of the treaty of 1782, the then President directed instructions to be sent to the Minister of the United States at The Hague, not to press the claims further. They were dropped and most of them were subsequently, in conformity with the suggestions of the Dutch Government, presented for payment by France under the treaty of 1832, and were allowed and paid. And thus the opinions of the Dutch Government respecting the treaty of 1782, as officially conveyed to Mr. Monroe by Mr. Changuion in 1815, were finally concurred in by the United States, and the question disposed of, as it was supposed, forever. "The United States found less difficulty in accepting the Dutch views in regard to the dissolution of the old body-politic, which was in existence in 1782, as they found the new body-politic differing from the former one in territory, in name, and in form of government. In place of the Republic of the United Provinces, they found the monarchy of the Netherlands; in place of the united territories of the High Mightinesses, they found the domains nearly doubled by the addition of Brabant and Flanders and part of Germany; in place of a homogeneous people, with united historic associations, they found a political body, avowedly created by the great powers of Europe out of elements that did not exist in a national organization before 1815, for the purpose of preserving a fictitious balance of power. When they found this new body-politic denying (and persisting in the denial) that it was the same body-politic which had existed under another form in the Batavian Republic, and in the Bonaparte Kingdom of Holland, the United States accepted this view.

"In the opinion of the President, this correspondence between Mr. Monroe and Mr. Changuion, taken in connection with the subsequent action of the Dutch Government in denying that the treaty had any valid operative force during the long period of eighteen years, when its existence would have been of advantage to the United States, and also in connection with the acquiescence of the Government of the United States in that action, and its submission of the rejected claims for compensation from France, places beyond doubt the fact that the treaty of 1782, for a period of over fifty years, has been mutually regarded as no longer in force.

"For a long series of years Holland was not in a condition to execute her part of the engagements of that treaty. During this long period there was none of that reciprocity of advantages which is the essence of treaties of amity and commerce, but all that the treaty engaged on the

part of Holland toward the United States was withheld and denied by the Government which controlled her, which Government, nevertheless, had the attitude of separate and independent existence, until finally her existence as a state was extinguished by her actual incorporation into France as a part of that Empire.

"Even if there were not this overwhelming proof of the intent of both Governments I could not concur with you in the opinion that the restitution of this treaty would be confirmed by the doctrine of the right of postliminy. That right belongs to the state of war, and its application is confined to the parties belligerent, or, at the utmost, to them and their allies, and can accrue only within their territory, or as between them. It cannot be enforced in neutral states, because the neutral is bound to consider each belligerent as equally just in his position.

"In the wars from which Holland suffered so severely during the latter part of the last and the beginning of the present centuries, the United States were neutral. It would be an extension of the doctrine which you invoke beyond any authority which I can find to apply it to a power which had maintained the position which the United States observed toward Holland and France during the long contest. I fail to find it anywhere stated that on the conclusion of a peace by which a conquered country has regained her independence, the ancient treaties of that country with other powers are thereby necessarily revived. Indeed, the course pursued by Holland and Denmark in the treaty of July 10, 1817, whereby the parties agreed that the stipulations of the treaty of commerce between them of 1701 should remain in force until there should be an arrangement for its renewal, would seem to show that in their joint judgment such was not the public law in 1817.

"Happily, however, the unmistakable accord of the United States and Holland, respecting the treaty of 1782, renders further discussion of this point unnecessary.

"Upon the pacification of Western Europe in 1815, and the creation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the United States, finding their commercial treaties with the states in Europe which had been at war at an end, provided by legislation to meet the necessities of the case, and for the establishment of reciprocal freedom of commercial intercourse with those states. By an act passed on the 3d day of March, 1815, they abolished all discriminating duties on vessels and on goods, the produce or manufacture of any foreign nation, imported into the United States in the vessels of those foreign nations which might abolish discriminating or countervailing duties to the disadvantage of the United States.

"This act subsequently became the subject of some correspondence between the two Governments. A negotiation was carried on at The Hague, in which both parties endeavored to agree upon a new treaty, with the old treaty of 1782 as the basis; but it failed from causes which it is not necessary to dwell upon. It is worthy of note in this connec

tion that after the objections to the Dutch contention concerning the treaty of 1782 had been withdrawn in 1820, Mr. Adams, referring to these unsuccessful negotiations, instructed Mr. Everett (August 9, 1823) that 'the act of 1815 was an experimental offer, made to all maritime nations. It was in the course of the same year accepted by Great Britain, confirmed in the form of a convention. A similar effort was made with the Netherlands in 1817, but without success; but the principle of equalization was established by corresponding legislative acts.'

"It is evident from this that the officers of the United States had reason to think that the commercial relations of the two countries at that time were regulated not by treaty, but by reciprocal legislation, and that the United States desired to have the basis of that legislation the principle of equalization. Indeed, as early as the 5th of March, 1818, Mr. Adams informed Mr. Ten Cate that notwithstanding the termination of the conferences between the plenipotentiaries of the two Governments without succeeding in the object of their meeting by the conclusion of a new treaty of commerce between the two nations, the desire of the Government of the United States is not the less earnest that the commercial intercourse between them may be regulated by principles of perfect reciprocity, and tending to promote the most cordial harmony and friendship between them.'

"Reciprocity and equalization to be achieved by legislation, were at that time the American solution of perfect commercial relations between the two nations.

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"I am not aware that any Dutch official took exceptions to this plan, or asserted that the treaty of 1782 was in force with the most favored nations' plan as its basis. Even Mr. Chevalier Baugeman Huygens, in his note of November 11, 1826, quoted by you, asserts that the provisious of the treaty were suspended' (Baron de Nazel claimed that the suspension lasted eighteen years), and the whole tenor of Mr. Huygens's note shows that he felt that there was no mutual act of the two Gov. ernments by which it could be shown that the suspension was set aside and the treaty revived. Else why does he speak in his note of the existence or the renewal of the treaty of 1782,' and why does he say that it would certainly be more advantageous to the two nations to leave that precarious legislation and be bound by liberal and reciprocal conventions?'

"In 1839 the parties left 'precarious legislation' and became 'bound by a liberal and reciprocal convention.' In this instrument, which is declared to be made because the parties are anxious to regulate the commerce and navigation carried on between the two countries in their respective vessels, it is provided that goods and merchandise of whatever origin, imported into or exported from the ports of one country from or to the ports of the other (those of the Netherlands being confined to Europe), shall pay no higher or other duties than those levied on like goods and merchandise imported or exported in national vessels;