179 



mission, was not even mentioned, nor was the remotest allusion to 

 it made in the joint letter of the mission to the Secretary of State, 

 of 25th December. It is true, that on the 5th of November, when 

 the vote upon Mr. Gallatin s offered article was taken, the instruc 

 tions of 19th October preceding, cancelling the paragraph of the in 

 structions of 15th April, 1813, cited by Mr. Russell in his duplicate, 

 although written and on their passage, had not been received ; but 

 it is equally true, that through the whole discussion preceding the 

 vote of 5th November, although every objection which an ardent, 

 profound, and vigorous mind could suggest against the article was 

 adduced, yet no mention was made of this paragraph of the instruc 

 tions of 15th April, 18 13. It never was alleged that the article would 

 violate those instructions ; and if it had been alleged the answer 

 would have been obvious, that so long as Great Britain retained 

 a claim to the boundary line to the Mississippi, we could not as- 

 smme for granted that that river was within our exclusive jurisdic 

 tion, nor consequently that the instructions of 15th April, 1813, for 

 bad us from agreeing to a stipulation reserving the right of British 

 subjects to its navigation. Mr. Russell says, that in my remarks I 

 admit, at least by implication, that the letter and spirit of the in. 

 struction of 15th April, 1813, were against the offer. 1 admit 

 no such thing; but think 1 have proved the contrary. I say that 

 never, either in the discussions preceding the vote of 5th Novem 

 ber, 1814, or in those of 28th and 29th November, were the instruc 

 tions of 15th April, 1813, alleged against the offer : nor did I show 

 to Mr. Russell at the Department of State, the record of the in 

 structions of 4th and 19th October, to show that we were released 

 from the obligation of observing the instructions of 15th April, 1813, 

 I showed them to him to prove, that in the variations of his dupli 

 cate, fabricated at Washington in 1822, from his real letter written 

 at Paris in 1815, he had not only introduced a new charge of ag 

 gravated crimination against his colleagues, contradicted by the 

 express words of his real letter, but that he had cited, in proof of 

 this charge, an instruction, which at the time when the question 

 was taken, against which he now, speaking as if in 1815, averred, 

 in contradiction to what he had really said in 1815, that he had 

 voted, because he thought it violated that instruction, he knew 

 had been cancelled. I showed them to him to prove, that what he 

 now alleged as his main motive for voting against the proposition, 

 had not been and could not have been his real motive : that it was 

 an invention of 1822, held forth as a narrrtive of facts in 1814. 



I trust I have now shown, beyond the reach of reply, that the 

 same character belongs to what he calls the real history of th&quot; 

 offer made to the. British plenipotentiaries on the 1st of December, 

 1814, in contradiction to the summary statement of it which I had 

 given in my remarks on his letters. 



But at the close of Mr. Russell s publication in the Boston 

 Statesman of 27th June, there is an insinuation, upon which I have. 

 a word to say, and with which I shall take leave of this part of hi 



