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est sufferers by the war, and by the restrictive measures that pre 

 ceded and they were among the most effective supporters of the 

 war, and of the honour of the nation in the conduct of it. To have 

 sacrificed their liberties in the fishery, would have been a stain upon 

 the gratitude, no less than upon the justice, of the American go 

 vernment. The instruction to accept a peace upon the basis of the 

 state before the war, was equally well considered. There was no 

 time at Ghent when the British plenipotentiaries would have ac 

 cepted it. The British government, at that time, had evidently 

 taken a bias, from which nothing could divert them, and which was 

 to appear to the world as if they had gained something by the war. 

 The state before the war, upon all the points of difference* was ac 

 tually offered to them, and they rejected it. After commencing 

 Ihe negotiation with the loftiest pretensions of conquest, they finally 

 settled down into the determination merely to keep Moose Island, 

 and the fisheries, to themselves. This was the object of their 

 deepest solicitude. Their efforts to obtain our acquiescence in 

 their pretension that the fishing liberties had been forfeited by the 

 war, were unwearied. They presented it to us in every form that 

 ingenuity could devise. It was the first stumbling block, and the 

 last obstacle to the conclusion of the treaty. Their pretension was 

 announced as a preliminary, at the beginning of the first conference, 

 and their article proposing a future negotiation to treat for a revival 

 of the liberty, was the last point from which they receded. But 

 the wisdom and the importance of the instruction to the American 

 mission, to agree to a peace on the basis of the state before the 

 war, was this : it enabled them to avoid a rupture of the negotia 

 tion upon points of minor importance, and upon which the spirit of 

 the country might not have been prepared to support the govern 

 ment. If upon any of the articles of the project in discussion, the 

 parties had come to an absolute splitting point, as upon many arti 

 cles they actually did, the American mission always had the general 

 state before the war, to offer as an alternative, which would save 

 them and the country from the danger of breaking off the negotia 

 tion upon any particular article, or any point of less than universal 

 interest. With an enemy whose policy might be really to continue 

 the war, but to throw the blame of it upon us, there was a hazard 

 in adhering inflexibly to any OHC point of difference. By the pow 

 er of offering the general state before the war, if the negotiation 

 was to be broken off, it would not be in the power of the enemy 

 to put us in the wrong for the rupture ; and with that general prin 

 ciple, always in reserve, we were enabled to insist more persever- 

 ingly upon every particular article in discussion. 



The editorial article in the Argus charges &quot; the Secretary&quot; with 

 confounding, in his strictures (on the duplicate letters,) the discus 

 sions which took place before, and after, the reception of the addi 

 tional instructions, by which means, it says, more discriminating 

 heads than Penn s [the editor of the Louisville Public Advertiser,] 

 have been deceived. 



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