68 [PRIVATE.] 



to the rank of a sovereign right, and thereby to have assumed the 

 unnecessary and inconvenient obligation of considering such a liber 

 ty to be an indispensable condition of our national existence, and 

 thus rendering that existence as precarious as the liberty itself. 

 They could not have considered a privilege, which they expressly 

 made to depend, to a very considerable extent, for its continuance, 

 (32) on events and private interests, as partaking of the character 

 and entitled to the duration of the inherent properties of sove 

 reignty. The settlement of the shores might, at any time, have 

 been effected by the policy of the British government, and would 

 have made the assent of British subjects, under the influence of 

 that policy, necessary to the continuance of a very considerable 

 portion of that (33) liberty. They could not have meant thus to 

 place, within the control of a foreign (34) government and its sub 

 jects, an (35) integral part, as we now affect to consider this privi 

 lege, of our national rights. 



It is from this view of the subject that I have been constrained 

 to believe that there was nothing in the treaty of 1783, which 

 could, essentially, distinguish it from ordinary treaties, or rescue it, 

 on account of any peculiarity of character, from the jura belli, or 

 from the operation of those events on which the (36) continuation 

 or termination of such treaties depends. I was, in like manner, 

 compelled to believe, if any such peculiarity belonged to those 

 provisions, in that treaty, which had an immediate connexion with 

 our independence, that it did not necessarily affect the nature of 

 the whole treaty, (37) or attach to a privilege which had no analo 

 gy to such provisions, or any relation to that independence. 



I know not, indeed, any treaty, or any article of a treaty, what 

 ever may have been the subject to which it related, or the terms in 

 which it was expressed, that has survived a war between the par 

 ties, without being specially renewed, by reference or recital&amp;gt; in 

 the succeeding treaty of peace. I cannot, indeed, (38) conceive of the 

 possibility of such a treaty or such an article ; for, however clear 

 and strong the stipulations for perpetuity might be, these stipula 

 tions themselves would follow the fate of ordinary unexecuted en 

 gagements, and require, after a war, the declared assent of the par 

 ties for their revival. 



We appear, in fact, not to have had an unqualified confidence in 

 our construction of the treaty of 1783, or to have been willing to 

 rest exclusively on its peculiar character our title to any of the 

 rights mentioned in it, and much less our title to the fishing (39)liberty 

 in question. If hostilities could not affect that treaty, (40) or abro 

 gate its provisions, why did we permit the boundaries assigned by 

 it to be brought into discussion, or stipulate for a (41) restitution of all 

 places taken from us during the present war ? If such (42) restitution 

 was secured by the mere operation of the treaty of 1783, why did 

 we discover any solicitude for the status ante helium, and not resist 

 the principle of uti possidetis on that ground ? 



