80 [PRIVATE.] 



If the article which we (128) offered merely intended to rescue the 

 third and eighth articles of the treaty of 1783, from the operation 

 of the present war, and to continue them precisely as they were 

 immediately prior 10 this war, the third article being then in full 

 force, and the eighth article being no longer (129) obligatory, we 

 should have attempted to exchange, like General Drumrnond, the 

 dead for the living. 



It is not surprising, therefore, that the British government, 

 should, in suspecting such an intention, (130) have rejected our pro 

 position. I was opposed, however, to making the proposition, not 

 only because 1 was convinced that it was (131) offered with no such 

 intention, but because I believed it would give to Great Britain 

 the free navigation of the Mississippi, under circumstances, and 

 evidently for an object, which would place it on very distinct 

 grounds from those on which it was placed by the treaty of 1783. 



The whole of the Mississippi being now exclusively within the 

 acknowledged jurisdiction of the United States, a simple renewal 

 of the British right to navigate it would place that right beyond 

 the reach of the war, and of every other previous circumstance 

 which might have impaired or terminated it; and the (132) power 

 to grant, on our part, being now complete, the right to enjoy, 

 (133) on hers, under our grant, must be complete also. 



It would be absurd to suppose that any thing impossible was in 

 tended, and that Great Britain was to be allowed to navigate the 

 Mississippi (134) precisely as she (135) could have navigated it imme 

 diately after the treaty of 1783 ; as if her territories extended to 

 it, and as if Spain was (136) in entire possession of one of its banks 

 and of a considerable portion of the other. The (13?) revival of the 

 British right to navigate the Mississippi would be, (138) under exist 

 ing circumstances, a new and complete grant to her, measured by 

 these circumstances, and thence embracing not only the entire free 

 dom of the whole extent of (139) that river, but the unrestrained access 



to it across our territories. If we did not intend (14o) this, we intended 

 nothing which Great Britain could accept ; and, whatever else 

 (14*1) might have been intended, if not at once rejected by her, would hereafter 

 have been the subject of new and endless controversy. When, how 

 ever, we connected the revival of the navigation of the Mississippi 

 with the revival of the (142) liberty of taking and curing fish within 

 the British jurisdiction, two things, which never before had any re 

 lation to each other, we evidently meant, if we acted (143) i n good 

 faith, not only to concede, as well as to obtain something, but also 

 to be understood as conceding an equivalent for what we obtained. 



In thus offering the navigation of the Mississippi, and the access 

 to it through our territories, as an equivalent for the fishing liberty, 

 we not only placed both on ground entirely different from that 

 (144) in which they respectively stood in the treaty of 1783, and 

 acted somewhat inconsistently with our own reasoning relative tc 



