270 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC., PRIOR TO TREATY OP 1818 



mode acknowledged the acknowledgment is, in its own nature, ir- 

 revocable. A power of revoking, or even of modifying it, would be 

 destructive of the thing itself; and, therefore, all such power is neces- 

 sarily renounced when the acknowledgment is made. The war could 

 not put an end to it, for the reason justly assigned by the American 

 minister, because a nation could not forfeit its sovereignty by the act 

 of exercising it; and for the further reason, that Great Britain, when 

 she declared Avar on her part against the United States, gave them, 

 by that very act, a new recognition of their independence. 



The nature of the liberty to fish within British limits, or to use 

 British territory, is essentially diiferent from the right to independ- 

 ence, in all that may reasonably be supposed to regard its intended 

 duration. The grant of this liberty has all the aspect of a policy 

 temporary and experimental, depending on the use that might be 

 made of it, on the condition of the islands and places where it was to 

 be exercised, and the more general conveniences or inconveniences, in 

 a military, naval, or commercial point of view, resulting from the 

 access of an independent nation to such islands and places. 



When, therefore, Great Britain, admitting the independence of the 

 United States, denies their right to the liberties for which they now 

 contend, it is not that she selects from the treaty, articles, or parts of 

 articles, and says, at her own will, this stipulation is liable to for- 

 feiture by war, and that it is irrevocable; but the principle of her 

 reasoning is, that such distinctions arise out of the provisions them- 

 selves, and are founded on the very nature of the grants. But the 

 rights acknowledged by the treaty of 1783 are not only distinguish- 

 able from the liberties conceded by the same treaty, in the foundation 

 upon which they stand, but they are carefully distinguished in the 

 treaty of 1783 itself. The undersigned begs to call the attention of 

 the American minister to the wording of the first and third articles, 

 to which he has often referred, for the foundation of his arguments. 

 In the first article, Great Britain acknowledges an independence 

 already expressly recognised by the Powers of Europe, and by her- 

 self, in her consent to enter into provisional articles, of November, 

 1782. In the third article, Great Britain acknowledges the right of 

 the United States to take fish on the Banks of Newfoundland and 

 other places, from which Great Britain has no right to exclude an 

 independent nation. But they are to have the liberty to cure and dry 

 them in certain unsettled places within His Majesty's territory. If 

 these liberties, thus granted, were to be .as perpetual and indefeasible 

 as the rights previously recognised, it is difficult to conceive that the 

 plenipotentiaries of the United States would have admitted a varia- 

 tion of language so adapted to produce a different impression; and, 

 above all, that they should have admitted so strange a restriction of a 

 perpetual and indefeasible right as that with which the article con- 

 cludes, which leaves a right so practical and so beneficial as this is 

 admitted to be. dependant on the will of British subjects in their 

 character of inhabitants, proprietors or possessors of the soil, to pro- 

 hibit its exercise altogether. 



It is surely obvious that the word right is, throughout the treaty, 

 used as applicable to what the United States were to enjoy, in virtue 

 of a recognised independence; and the word liberty to what they 

 were to enjoy, as concessions strictly dependant on the treaty itself. 



