20 



plicating application to the British government for a 

 further suspension of these orders, there was an evident 

 reluctance to yield this indulgence. 



Had not the American government abandoned the 

 ground which Mr. Adams assumed, a new war would 

 inevitably have occurred, and nothing would have been 

 gained by the Treaty of Ghent but a respite, during 

 which, our ability to maintain a war would have been 

 lessened, and the spirit of the people which was flowing 

 brightly from the excitement of otir successes on the ocean, 

 and the mighty victory at New Orleans would have slum 

 bered in indifference. The cause of war would have 

 been narrowed to a single point. The right for which 

 we contended would have been considered as the exclu 

 sive interest of Massachusetts, and to say the most of it, 

 of a questionable character. 



A statesman, a suckling statesman could not have 

 committed a greater mistake than to pledge the national 

 honour on the question of the fishing right, and then to 

 sign a Treaty with a full understanding that the right 

 would not be admitted, he having the germs of war in the 

 very instrument of pacification, and on a point about 

 which it would have been impossible to make the people 

 believe that the general interest was involved. 



If this right stood as unshaken as it did before the 

 last war, &quot; constituting a vital part of our political 

 existence, and resting on the same solid foundation as 

 our Independence itself,&quot; was it worthy of the dignity 

 of the American nation to beg for it, or to carry it into 

 the market for the purposes of traffic, by holding out con 

 siderations of interest as the bonus for which it was to 

 be regranted. If the right was of this lofty character 

 it was enough. A right of this character rested on its 

 own basis and required no props to sustain it. If the 

 alternative was its surrender, or war, not an American 

 could hesitate in his choice, if he viewed the subject in 

 the same light with Mr. Adams : under such circum 

 stances it was a national degradation to appeal to British 

 humanity for the permission to use an unquestionable right 

 &quot; by representing it as affording the means of subsistence 

 to multitudes; who without it would be destitute.&quot; 



