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a fresh instruction from his government, given at the most trying 

 period of the war upon the very tirst rumour of an intention, on 

 the part of Great Britain, to demand its surrender, not to surrender 

 it, sooner to break off the negotiation than surrender it ; that such 

 a citizen, with the dying words of Lawrence, &quot; Don t give up the 

 &quot;ship,&quot; still vibrating on his ear, should describe this interest &quot;as 

 &quot; totally unnecessary for us for subsistence or occupation,&quot; and 

 affording, &quot; in no honest way, either commercial facility or political 

 * advantage,&quot; as t; the doubtful accommodation of a few fishermen 

 &quot; annually decreasing in number,&quot; is as strange and unaccountable 

 to me as that he should deliberately sit down, two months after the 

 treaty was concluded, and write to his government a cold-blooded 

 dissertation to prove that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, in 

 the principle upon which he and his colleagues had rested its future 

 defence, and that he considered the fishing liberty &quot; to be entirely 

 &quot; at an end, without a new stipulation for its revival.&quot; 



Such were not the sentiments of a majority of the American com 

 missioners at Ghent ; such were, particularly, not the sentiments 

 of the writer of these remarks. He reflects, with extreme satis 

 faction, upon that deep and earnest regard for this interest mani 

 fested at that time, by the executive government of the United 

 States, in the positive and unqualified instruction of 25th June, 1814, 

 to the commissioners, on no consideration whatever to surrender 

 the fisheries. He rejoices that this instruction was implicitly obey 

 ed ; that the nation issued from the war with all its rights and liber 

 ties unimpaired, preserved as well from the artifices of diplomacy, 

 as from the force of preponderating power upon their element, the 

 seas ; and he trusts that the history of this transaction, in all its de 

 tails, from the instruction not to surrender the fisheries, to the con 

 clusion of the convention of 20th October, 1818, will give solemn 

 warning to the statesmen of this Union, in their conflicts with fo 

 reign powers, through all future time, never to consider any of the 

 liberties of this nation as abrogated by a war, or capable of being 

 extinguished by any other agency than our own express renun 

 ciation. 



JOHN qUINCY ADAMS. 



May 3, 1822. 



