competent judges; if that condition is harmless at present it is not possible to foresee whether, under future circumstances, it will not prove highly injurious; and whether harmless or not, it is not less a permanent and new condition imposed upon us.  But the fact is, that by the introduction of that clause, by obliging us to keep within our jurisdiction, as British subjects, the very men who have been the instruments used by Great Britain to promote Indian wars on our frontiers; by obliging us to suffer those men to continue their commerce with the Indians living in our territory, uncontrolled by those regulations which we have thought necessary in order to restrain our own citizens in their intercourse with these tribes, Great Britain has preserved her full influence with the Indian nations.  By a restoration of the posts under that condition we have lost the greatest advantage that was expected from their possession, viz.:  future security against the Indians.  In the same manner have the British preserved the commercial advantages which result from the 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