76 [PRIVATE.] 



but certainly the majority believed (103) themselves permitted to offer 

 a very explicit proposition with regard to the navigation of its prin 

 cipal (104) river. I believed, with them, that we were so permitted, and that 

 we were likewise permitted to offer a proposition relative to the fishing liberty, 

 and had the occasion required it, to make proposals concerning the trade to the 

 British East Indies. I was persuaded, that treating relative to these privileges, 

 or discussing the obligation or expediency of granting or witholding them, re 

 spectively, violated in no way our instructions, or affected the general right? 

 which we were forbidden to bring into discussion. 



Considering, theretore, the Ashing liberty to be entirely at an 

 end, without a new stipulation for its revival, and believing that we 

 were entirely free to discuss the terms and conditions of such a 

 stipulation, I did not object to the article proposed by us because 

 any article on the subject was unnecessary, or contrary to our in 

 structions, but I objected specially to that article, because, by con 

 ceding (105)init the free navigation of the Mississippi, (106) we offered, 

 in my estimation, for the fishing privilege, a price much above its value. 



In no view of the subject could I discover any (107) analogy between 

 the two objects, and the only reason for connecting them and mak 

 ing them mutual equivalents for each other, appeared to be because 

 they were both found in the treaty of 1783. 



If that treaty was abrogated by the war, as I consider it to have 

 been, any connexion between its parts must have ceased, and the 

 liberty of navigating the Mississippi by British subjects must, at 

 least, be completely at an end ; for it will not, I trust, be attempted 

 to continue it by a (108; prescriptive title, or to consider it as a 

 (109) reservation, made by the United States, from any grant of sove 

 reignty which, at the treaty of peace, they accorded to Great Bri 

 tain. If, indeed, it was such a reservation, it must have been in 

 tended for (HO) our benefit, and, of (111) course, could be no equivalent 

 for the fishing (112) privilege. If it is considered as a reservation 

 made by Great Britain, it will reverse (113) the facts assumed by us 

 in relation to that privilege. 



The (H4) third article of the treaty of 1783, respecting the fish 

 eries, and the (115) eighth article of that treaty, respecting the Missis 

 sippi, had not the slightest reference to each other, and were placed 

 as remote, the one from the other, as the limits of that treaty could 

 well admit. Whatever, therefore, (116) was the cause of inserting 

 the fishing liberty, whether it was a voluntary and gratuitous grant 

 on the part of Great Britain, or extorted from her as a condition 

 on which the peace depended, it could have had no relation (117) to 

 the free navigation of the Mississippi. Besides, the article relative 



