"Wheaton is very clear upon this point. Let him answer:
"'As to straits and sounds,' says he, 'bounded on both sides by the territory of the same State, so narrow as to be commanded by cannon-shot from both shores, and communicating from one sea to another, we have already seen that the territorial sovereignty may be limited by the right of other nations to navigate the seas thus connected. The physical power which the State bordering on both sides the sound or strait has of appropriating its waters, and of excluding other nations from their use, is here encountered by the moral obstacle arising from the right of other nations to communicate with each other. If the straits of Gibraltar, for example, were bordered on both sides by the possessions of the same nation, and if they were sufficiently narrow to be commanded by cannon-shot from both shores, this passage would not be the less freely open to all nations, since the navigation both of the Atlantic ocean and of the Mediterranean sea is free to all. Thus, it has already been stated that the navigation of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, by which the Mediterranean and Black seas are connected together, is free to all nations, subject to those regulations which are indispensably necessary for the security of the Ottoman empire.'—Wheaton's Elements of International Law, p. 240.
"Now, Bolivia and Ecuador have both established the freedom of the seas—that is the term used by President Belzu—upon their Amazonian waters, as Russia did upon the Black sea, by her acquisitions along its shores, and as the Baltic powers did before her. These republics have made a free gift of their waters to commerce, as the nations of the Baltic and Black seas did; and they have brought the Amazon, in Brazil, exactly within the case so well put by this distinguished jurist.
"The international code, like all others of human origin, requires occasional revision; for the principles which have been laid down in Europe with regard to seas, rivers, and other questions, have not always been either sanctioned or acquiesced in on this side of the water.
"We have filed in the great international court our bill of exceptions to the European doctrine concerning blockades, the right of search, closed seas, and other points, as to which the grand inquest of the world at large—the people, not kings—have pronounced judgment; and their verdict is, WE ARE RIGHT.
"Hence the stronger necessity and greater propriety in laying down now the international doctrine which ought to obtain with regard to the Amazon.
"In 1821, Russia claimed the exclusive right of navigating the North Pacific ocean, upon the ground that she owned portions both of the Asiatic and American shores, which brought that ocean within the category of a closed sea.
"This claim was contested in limine, and successfully resisted by the statesmen of America.
"In like manner, the American doctrine with regard to navigable water-courses owned by two or more nations is well understood, for it has been often proclaimed touching our own Mississippi, as well as the St. Lawrence.
"In each of these cases there were but two riparian States; but with regard to the Amazon there are no less than six. This complicates the question, and makes any special arrangement among them with regard to the navigation of that river very difficult, if not impossible. Two of the riparian republics are already at war, and, owing to this circumstance, one of them is excluded from the proposed Amazonian Congress. Inaction, the statu quo, the sealed river and closed strait, and unsubdued wilderness—these are what Brazil wants. And, therefore, after having exhausted argument, there is no way left for the adjustment of this question by the United States—and the United States ought to adjust it, for it is an American question—but that which the laws of nations suggest.