lations, the American flag was there treated on an equality with the national flag, which enjoyed a perfect reciprocity in the United States. The desire of His Majesty the King of the Netherlands to favor and extend the navigation and commerce between his kingdom and the United States is well known, and of the sincerity of his disposition the President cannot be in doubt. His Majesty has given unequivocal proofs of it from his coming to the throne to the time when Belgium was united to the kingdom of the Netherlands. His Majesty, without knowing the reciprocal disposition of the Government of the United States, admitted, without hesitation, the bases of the treaty of 1782, and caused them to be applied to the navigation and commerce of the United States. The Americans were placed immediately in the position of the most favored nation. No. 316. Mr. Fish to Mr. De Westenberg. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, SIR: I have read your notes of the Sth and of the 17th of March last, and the inclosures of the latter, with the care and attention which I desire to give to everything written under the instructions of your government. By selecting and separating a particular fact in history from the other facts and circumstances with which it is connected, and thus considering it in an isolated form, it is possible to receive entirely erroneous impressions. Such an impression seems to have been formed by you in consequence of a partial consideration of the short extracts from the voluminous correspondence conducted between Holland and the United States after the close of the wars of Napoleon, which are inclosed in your note of the 17th of March.' A brief review of the history of the commercial relations between the two countries will show how erroneous this impression is. The wise founders of this Government, even before the national independence was achieved, recognized the importance to the new nation of cultivating friendship and commercial intercourse with the Netherlands; and their advances in this direction met with an equal consideration at the hands of the States-General. The treaty of 1782 between the two powers is declared to be made "for establishing the most perfect equality and reciprocity, reserving withal to each party the liberty of admitting at its pleasure other nations to a participation of the same advantages." For this purpose it was mutually agreed that each should enjoy for its subjects and citizens in the ports or territories of the other all rights, liberties, privileges, immunities, and exemptions in trade, navigation, and commerce which are or should be accorded to the most favored nations by the other, and that the duties or imposts imposed by each upon the subjects or citizens of the other were not to exceed those which were or might be imposed upon the citizens or subjects of the most favored nations. In other words, it was agreed that the rights of each in the territories of the other in these respects should be measured by the largest liberties accorded to the most favored nation. The power with which the United States contracted these relations is described in the treaty as "their High Mightinesses the States-General of the United Netherlands." In a circular letter from their high mightinesses, addressed to the States of the United Provinces, dated the 10th of February, 1793, they describe themselves as "a pacific re public," and their principal magistrate is styled by them "the Stadtholder of the United Netherlands, of which he is not the sovereign, but an illustrious personage, attached to this republic by eminent dignities, with which he is invested under the sovereignty of the States of the provinces, the union of which represents the sovereignty of the confederation." Hostilities between the United Provinces and France broke out in 1793, and continued with varying fortunes until December, 1795, when the Stadtholder abandoned the country. Another form of republican government was established over what was substantially the same territory, which was styled at first the Republic of the United Provinces and afterward the Batavian Republic. The revolutionary government came into complete possession of political power, so far as related to foreign powers, and was recognized by many of the other powers, among whom were the United States. It was recognized by Great Britain in the treaty of Amiens, to which it was a party. Subsequently this republic became a monarchy, with a Bonaparte as king, and this monarchy in a few years disappeared in its turn, and the whole territory of the old seven United Provinces was incorporated into the French Empire, and disappeared as a separate nationality. On the abdication of the Emperor Napoleon the allies entered into a secret treaty at Paris, in which it was agreed that the establishment of a just balance of power in Europe required that Holland should be so constituted as to be enabled to support her independence, and that therefore the countries comprised between the sea, the frontiers of France and the Meuse, should be given up forever to Holland. In the following year this secret article was carried into effect in the congress at Vienna. The sixty-fifth article of the general treaty of all the powers and the first article of the particular treaty respecting the Netherlands, alike provide that the old United Provinces of the Netherlands and the former Belgic provinces, and certain other countries therein designated, should form, under the sovereignty of the house of Orange, the kingdom of the Netherlands. In conformity with their practice to recognize de facto governments, the United States recognized this political change and entered into diplomatic relations with this new government. During these frequent political changes, and mainly during the last two years of the reign of Louis Bonaparte, several vessels of the United States and their cargoes were seized and condemned or confiscated in the ports which had before then formed the territorial domain of their high mightinesses the States-General. When peace was restored, the United States, who had not been parties to the dismemberment or to the re-organization of continental Europe, made application to the gov ernment of the house of Orange for compensation for the injuries which their citizens had suffered in this way. The instructions to make these representations were dated the 9th of May, 1815, before the diu of war had ceased. A long discussion ensued, conducted in Holland, and extending from 1815 to 1820; but before considering it, in order to preserve a chronological sequence of events, I must refer to certain events which took place in Washington in 1815 and 1816, and which were referred to in my note to you of the 19th of February last. The negotiations at Washington were commenced by a note from Mr. Changuion, the then Dutch minister, to Mr. Monroe, the then Secretary of State, dated the 24th of February, 1815, in which he transmitted "the first overtures which he was instructed to make in order to open negotiations for a treaty of amity and commerce," and proposed "as a base for the new treaty to be concluded the text of the old treaty concluded in 1782, with the exception of the changes made necessary by the actual circumstances." Mr. Monroe replied to this on the 15th of April, 1815, thus: "The treaties between the United States and some of the powers of Europe having been annuled by causes proceeding from the state of Europe for some time past, and other treaties having expired, the United States have now to form their system of commercial intercourse with every power, as it were, at the same time. You have proposed to form a new treaty. To this the President has readily agreed. 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 mouths 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 concessious 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 re-open 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 with out 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 be 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 continning force of the treaty of 1782, the then president directed instruc tions 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 govern ment, 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 postliminary. 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 |