5299. MISSISSIPPI RIVER NAVIGATION, Western people and.—[further continued] .
The navigation of the
Mississippi was perhaps the strongest trial to
which the justice of the Federal Government
could be put. If ever they thought wrong about
it, I trust they have got to rights. I should
think it proper for the Western country to defer
pushing their right to that navigation to extremity
as long as they can do without it tolerably;
but that the moment it becomes absolutely
necessary for them, it will become the duty of
the maritime States to push it to every extremity
to which they would their own right of
navigating the Chesapeake, the Delaware, the
Hudson, or any other water.—
To John Brown. Washington ed. ii, 395.
Ford ed., v, 17.
(P.
May. 1788)
