202 



HL Fishing Liberties their Valut. 



OF all the errors in Mr. Russell s letter of 1 1th February, 181 , 

 to the Secretary of State, there is none more extraordinary in its 

 character, or more pernicious in its tendency, than the disparaging 

 estimate which he holds forth of the -value of the liberties in the 

 fisheries, secured by the treaty of 1733, and, as he would maintain, 

 extinguished, by the war of 1812. Not satisfied with maintaining 

 in the face of his own signatures at Ghent, the doctrine that all right 

 to them had been irredeemably extinguished by the war ; not con 

 tented with the devotion of all his learning and all his ingenuity, to 

 take from his country the last and only support of right upon which, 

 this great interest had, by himself and his colleagues, been left at 

 ihe conclusion of the peace to depend ; not ashamed of urging the 

 total abandonment of a claim, at that very time in litigation, and of 

 which he was himself one of the official defenders, he has exhausted 

 his powers, active and meditative, in the effort to depreciate the 

 value of those possessions, which, while committed to his charge, 

 he was so surprisingly intent upon relinquishing forever. 



His first attempt in this patriotic career, is to represent this in 

 terest as a merely sectional and very trifling concern, brought in 

 conflict at Ghent with another but a much greater and deeper inte 

 rest of a different section of the Union. 



His next endeavour is to represent it as an exclusive interest of a 

 few individuals, the mere accommodation of a few fishermen, annu 

 ally decreasing in number. 



And, finally, he degrades the value of the object itself, by affirm 

 ing that the fogs in the high northern latitudes prevented the effectual 

 curing of the fish, and that this liberty was totally unnecessary to us 

 for subsistence or occupation, and afforded in no way, (in the du 

 plicate he says in nohonest way,) any commercial facility or political 

 advantage. 



It is scarcely possible to render a greater disservice to the peo 

 ple of this Union, than in their controversies with foreign powers* 

 to array the interests of one section of the Union against those of 

 another. On no occasion can this be so dangerous as when the 

 power, with whom the negotiation is held, has the purpose of wrest 

 ing from us the enjoyment of such a possession, the immediate in 

 terest of which is confined to one section ; and 1 confidently affirm, 

 that never since the existence of the United States as an independ 

 ent nation, has there been an emergency upon which there was less 

 reason for flinging into the discussion this torch of dissension, thnn 

 at the negotiation of Ghent. The aim of tbe enemy was at the fish 

 eries. His object was to deprive us of them. The American ple 

 nipotentiaries were instructed not to surrender them. What more 

 could the enemy desire, than to excite within the American mission 

 itself, a sectional interest adverse to that of the fisheries ? He did 

 so ; and so far as Mr. Russell dared to indulge his disposition, mo?* 



