177 



of the fisheries, because the price of its purchase would be to per 

 mit British subjects to travel a highway in the Western Country. 

 It was impossible to make of it any thing more ; and deeply con 

 cerned as I felt for the fate of the fisheries, 1 greatly regretted 

 that the objection was made to it. Not that I expected it would be 

 accepted by the British plenipotentiaries. 1 too well knew the 

 value which they set upon the fisheries, and the worthlessness at 

 which they must estimate the naked right to them of navigating the 

 Mississippi, to consider it as probable that they would accept the 

 proposal. But our duty as ministers of the Union, charged with 

 the defence of all its rights and liberties staked upon the conflict, 

 and specially instructed not to surrender the fisheries, was to use 

 even/ fair exertion to preserve them. And Mr. Gallatin s proposal 

 vvas one of the only two possible modes of effecting it. 



Nevertheless, as a strong and earnest opposition to proposing the 

 article was made, avowedly founded upon a supposed interest 

 merely sectional ; after a discussion continued through six succes 

 sive days, at the last of which only I had taken part, and before the 

 vote was taken, I did, on the 4th of November, declare myself pre 

 pared either to propose Mr. Gallatin s article, or to take the ground 

 that all the rights and liberties in the fisheries were recognised as 

 a part of our national independence, that they could not be abro 

 gated by the war, and needed no stipulation for their renewal to 

 assert this principle in the note to be sent to the British plenipo 

 tentiaries, with the project of the treaty 3 and to omit the article 

 altogether. 



Mr. Russell, in the acuteness of his perceptions, discovers an in 

 consistency between these two opinions, in his letter from Paris, 

 he charged it as an inconsistency upon the majority of the mission. 

 In the Boston Statesman he returns to it as an inconsistency of mine. 

 According to his doctrine, the assertion of a right or liberty, is incon - 

 Distent with the oiler of a stipulation for its recognition. The first 

 article of the preliminaries, of November, 1782, was, according to 

 this doctrine, inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence. 

 Why stipulate for a right, which you hold by virtue of your own 

 declaration ? I cannot waste words in refuting such positions as 

 these. So of the pretended inconsistency of stipulating for the li 

 berty, leaving the right to the fisheries to rest upon the recognition 

 in the treaty of 1783. The stipulation offered was co-extensive 

 with the portion of right contested by the adverse party. There 

 was no motive tor asking a stipulation for that which they did not 

 question. If the British plenipotentiaries had not notified to us 

 that they considered our privileges of fishing within the limits cf 

 British sovereignty, as forfeited by the war, I never should have 

 thought of asking a nw stipulation to secure them. If their doc 

 trine and Mr. Russell s was right, that the whole treaty of 1783 wy fc 

 abrogated by the war, and that our only title to the fishing liber 

 ties was a grant of his Britannic majesty s, in that treaty, which, 

 i&amp;gt;y the mere existence of war, was totally extinguished, they 



