161 



,Iaim to the navigation of the Mississippi, and when that negotiation 

 had been conducted under instructions entirely drawn up by me ; 

 a call from the House of Representatives comes for the residue of 

 tjie Ghent documents. Mr. Russell, having it placed at his own op 

 tion whether his old denunciation of himself, and his disagreement 

 with the majority, shall or shall not be communicated to the House, 

 deliberately decides that it shall and gives himself and others no 

 repose, till he has brought before Congress and the nation, his bill 

 of attainder against his colleagues, new vamped to suit the political 

 passions of the day ; it is HOW too late to say that this is a mere 

 personal controversy between Mr. Russell and me with which the 

 public have no concern. 



The principle asserted in the letter from Paris, that tt-e were left 

 without any title to the fishing liberty -whatsoever, was in the highest 

 degree pernicious to one of the most important interests of this 

 Union. The pretension that our only title to them had been a 

 temporary grant of the British king, revokable at hjs pleasure, 

 was equally unfounded in law and in fact. The reason assigned 

 for the averment of its extinction that war abrogates all treaties, 

 and all articles of every treaty is not warranted by the law of na 

 tions ; and if it were, would not warrant the conclusion drawn 

 from it. The character and value of the proposition relating to 

 the Mississippi, are in the letter from Paris totally misrepresented 

 and perverted by exaggeration. The value of the fishing liberty 

 is equally misrepresented and perverted by disparagement. The 

 possession of this liberty has twice been the turning hinge upon 

 which wars with Great Britain have been concluded. If upon ei 

 ther of those occasions the principles asserted in Mr. RusselT 

 letter had prevailed with the American negotiators, our rights m 

 the Newfoundland, Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Labrador fishery, 

 would have been lost. The same question may very probably arise 

 again. I undertake to prove that the argument, as Mr. Russell 

 calls it, of his letter, is in all its parts as untenable as it was unpro- 

 pitious to the cause of his country, 



I have no intention, however, of pursuing this controversy fur 

 ther in the newspapers. I propose to publish in one collection, 

 the Ghent documents called for by the resolution of the House of 

 Representatives ; the message of the President to the House, with 

 Mr. Russell s letters and my remarks ; his publication of 27th June, 

 in the Boston Statesman, and mine in answer thereto in the Na 

 tional Intelligencer, with other papers, rectifying other represen 

 tations of Mr. Russell : and discussing the effect of war upon 

 treaties and treaty stipulations ; the value of the Mississippi navi 

 gation to the British, and of the fishing liberty to us and the rights 

 by which we have held and still hold them. That there ever w;is 

 any difference of opinion between the American plenipotentiaries 

 at Ghent upon measures in which they all finally concurred, would 

 never have been made known to the public by me. Satisfied with 

 an equal share of responsibility, for all which they had done, con- 



