PERTAINING TO NEGOTIATION OF TREATY OF 1818. 271 



" In answer to the declaration made by the British plenipotentiaries 

 respecting the fisheries, the undersigned, referring to what passed in 

 the conference of the 9th of August, can only state that they ane 

 not authorized to bring into discussion any of the rights or liberties 

 which the United States have heretofore enjoyed in relation thereto. 

 From their nature, and from the peculiar character of the treaty of 

 1783, by which they were recognised, no further stipulation has been 

 deemed necessary by the Government of the United States to entitle, 

 them to the full enjoyment of all of them." 



If the stipulation of the treaty of 1783 was one of the conditions 

 by which His Majesty acknowledged the sovereignty and independ- 

 ence of the United States; if it was the mere recognition of rights 

 and liberties previously existing and enjoyed, it was neither a nrivi- 

 lege gratuitously granted, nor liable to be forfeited by the mere exist- 

 ence of a subsequent war. If it was not forfeited by the war, neither 

 could it be impaired by the declaration of Great Britain, that she did 

 not intend to renew the grant. Where there had been no gratuitous 

 concession, there could be none to renew ; the rights and liberties of 

 the United States could not be cancelled by the declaration of Great 

 Britain's intentions. Nothing could abrogate them but the renun- 

 ciation of them by the United States themselves. 



Among the articles of that same treaty of 1783, there is one stipu- 

 lating that the subjects and citizens of both nations shall enjoy for- 

 ever, the right of navigating the river Mississippi, from its sources 

 to the ocean. And although at the period of the negotiations of 

 Ghent, Great Britain possessed no territory upon that river, yet the 

 Briti-li plenipotentiaries, in their first note, considered (Treat Britain 

 as still entitled to claim the free navigation of it. without offering 

 for it any equivalent. And. afterwards, when offering a boundary 

 line, which would have abandoned every pretension even to any 

 future possession on that river, they still claimed, not only its free 

 navigation, but a right of access to it, from the British dominions in 

 North America, through the territories of the United States. The 

 American plenipotentiaries, to foreclose the danger of any subsequent 

 misunderstanding and discussion upon either of these points, pro- 

 posed an article recognising anew the liberties on both sides. In 

 declining to accept it, the British plenipotent iaries proposed an art icle 

 engaging to negotiate, in future, for the renewal of both, for equiva- 

 lents to be mutually granted. This was refused by the American 

 plenipotentiaries, on the avowed principle thai its acceptance would 

 impiv the admission on the part of the united Slates that, their liber- 

 ties in the fisheries, recognised by the treaty of L783, had been an- 

 nulled, which they declared themselves in no manner authorized to 

 concede. 



Let it be supposed, my lord, that the notice given by the British 

 plenipotentiaries, in relation to the B tieries, had been in reference 

 to a not her article of the -a me treaty; that Great Britain had declared 

 she did not intend to grant again, gratuitously, the grant in a former 

 treaty of peace, acknowledging the United states as free, sovereign, 

 and independent State-; or, that she did not intend to grant. 

 gratuitously, the same boundary line which she had granted in the 

 former treaty of peace: is it not obvious that the answer would have 

 been that tne United States needed n«» ne^ acknowledgment of 



