175 



for Mr. Russell to say, that he still differs in opinion with me, and 

 will probably continue to differ in opinion with me, on this point : 

 for 1 have proved from his o\vn words that his opinion did not 

 differ from mine, as to the proposal actually made ; and if he does 

 differ with me now, it is only in as much as he differs with himself. 



As to the value, the comparative value of the fisheries to us, with 

 this admission of a mere naked right in foreigners to travel on one 

 of our high-ways, constitutionally declared to be forever free to all 

 the citizens of every State in the Union, I cannot agnin withhold 

 my surprize that it should be denied, by a citizen of Massachusetts. 

 If a citizen of Georgia should publish a laborious argument to 

 prove that the right of cultivating cotton, or a citizen of Louisiana 

 should maintain that the right of raising sugar, was of no value to 

 the people of the United States, is it to the derision or to the indig 

 nation of his country, that his dissertation would prove the most 

 effectual passport.? And if such an argument should be written, 

 not as an idle amusement to show with how much ingenuity the 

 wildest absurdities might be maintained, but as a grave state-paper, 

 addressed to the supreme authority of the Union, striking directly, 

 not at the mere theoretical right, but at the actual exercise of it by 

 the citizens of Georgia or of Louisiana, and directly tending, in con 

 currence with a foreign power contesting it, to deprive them of it 

 forever what would the people of Georgia and Louisiana, what 

 would the people of the United States, say to such a citizen ? 

 Should it further appear, that this very citizen, at the very time of 

 his composing the work, was a member of a commission specially 

 charged and instructed to defend and maintain, against the most 

 formidable of national enemies, the same right, which he was thus 

 exercising every faculty of his mind irredeemably to destroy ; that 

 after subscribing his name to a principle containing the last and only 

 defence of this right, While the contest was yet pending, and he 

 himself was yet charged with its support, he should contradict his 

 own signature, exhaust his ingenuity to prove the principle totally 

 destitute of foundation, and style it the dream of a visionary, to 

 ridicule one of his colleagues for believing it ; such a rare combi 

 nation of incidents would doubtless present a moral and political 

 character to the contemplation of the States most immediately inte 

 rested in his conduct, and to the Union, which would not soon be 

 obliterated from their memory. 



That which a native citizen of Georgia or of Louisiana would 

 have done, under the circumstances here supposed, if the right of 

 cultivating cotton or sugar had been at stake, Mr. Russell, a native 

 of Massachusetts, has done, in the hour of danger to her fishery. 

 The Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Gulf of St. Lawrence, and La 

 brador fisheries, are in nature, and in the consideration both of 

 jfcheir value and of the right to share in them, one fishery . To be 

 cut off from the enjoyment of that right, would be to the people of 

 Massachusetts, a calamity similar in kind, and comparable in de 

 gree, with an interdict to the people of Georgia or Louisiana to 



