266 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC., SXJRSEQUENT TO TREATY OF 1818 



enjoyed from the first settlement of the country; that it was my in- 

 tention to address, in the course of a few days, a letter to him on the 

 subject. He said (hat they would give due attention to the letter that 

 1 should send him, but that Great Britain had explicitly manifested 

 her intention concerning it; that this subject, as I doubtless knew, 

 hail excited a great deal of feeling in this country, perhaps much more 

 than its importance deserved; but their own fishermen considered it as 

 an excessive hardship to be supplanted by American fishermen, even 

 upon the very shores of the British dominions. I said that those 

 whose sensibilities had been thus excited had probably not considered 

 the question of right in the point of view in which it had been re- 

 garded by us; that they were the sensibilities of a partial and indi- 

 vidual interest, stimulated by the passions of competition, and con- 

 sidering the right of the Americans as if it had been a privilege 

 granted to them by the British Government. If this interest was to 

 have weight in determining the policy of the cabinet, there was an- 

 other interest liable to be affected in the opposite manner, which 

 would be entitled equally to consideration — the manufacturing in- 

 terest. The question of right had not been discussed at the negotia- 

 tion of Ghent. The British plenipotentiaries had given a notice that 

 the British Government did not intend hereafter to grant to the 

 people of the United States the right to fish, and to cure and dry fish 

 within the exclusive British jurisdiction in America, without an 

 equivalent, as it had been granted by the treaty of peace in 1783. 

 The American plenipotentiaries had given notice, in return, that the 

 American Government considered all the rights and liberties in and 

 to the fisheries on the whole coast of North America as sufficiently 

 secured by the possession of them, which had always been enjoyed 

 previous to the revolution, and by the recognition of them in the 

 treaty of peace in 1783 ; that they did not think any new stipulation 

 necessary for a further confirmation of the right, no part of which 

 did they consider as having been forfeited by the war. It was 

 obvious that the treaty of peace of 1783 was not one of those ordinary 

 treaties which, by the usages of nations, were held to be annulled by 

 a subsequent war between the same parties; it was not simply a treaty 

 of peace; it was a treaty of partition between two parts of one nation, 

 agreeing thenceforth to be separated into two distinct sovereignties. 

 The conditions upon which this was done constituted, essentially, the 

 independence of the United States; and the preservation of all the 

 fishing rights, which they had constantly enjoyed over the whole coast 

 of North America, was among the most important of them. This 

 was no concession, no grant, on the part of Great Britain, which could 

 be annulled by a war. There had been, in the same treaty of 1783, a 

 right recognized in British subjects to navigate the Mississippi. This 

 right the British plenipotentiaries at Ghent had considered as still a 

 just claim on the part of Great Britain, notwithstanding the war that 

 had intervened. The American plenipotentiaries, to remove all 

 future discussion upon both points, had offered to agree to an article 

 expressly confirming both the rights. In declining this, an offer had 

 been made on the part of Great Britain of an article stipulating to 

 negotiate in future for the renewal of both the rights, for equivalents, 

 which was declined by the American plenipotentiaries, on the express 

 ground that its effect would have been an implied admission that the 



