PERTAINING TO NEGOTIATION OF TREATY OF 1818. 279 



Mr. Adams to Lord Castlereagh. 



13 Craven Street, January 22, 1816. 



The undersigned, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipoten- 

 tiary from the United States of America, has received, and communi- 

 cated to the Government of the United States, the answer of Lord 

 Bathurst to a letter which he had the honor of addressing to his lord- 

 ship on the 25th of September last, representing the grounds upon 

 which the American Government consider the people of the United 

 States entitled to all the rights and liberties in and connected with 

 the fisheries on the coasts of North America, which had been enjoyed 

 by them previously to the American revolution, and which, by the 

 third article of the treaty of peace of 1783, were recognized by Great 

 Britain as rights and liberties belonging to them. The reply to Lord 

 Bathurst's note has been delayed by circumstances which it is unneces- 

 sary to detail. It is for the Government of the United States alone to 

 decide upon the proposal of a negotiation upon the subject. That 

 they will at all times be ready to agree upon arrangements which may 

 obviate and prevent the recurrence of those inconveniences stated to 

 have resulted from the exercise by the people of the United States of 

 these rights and liberties, is not to be doubted ; but as Lord Bathurst 

 appears to have understood some of the observations in the letter of 

 the undersigned as importing inferences not intended by him, and as 

 some of his lordship's remarks particularly require a reply, it is pre- 

 sumed that since Lord Castlereagh's return, it will, with propriety, 

 be addressed to him. 



It had been stated, in the letter to Lord Bathurst, that the treaty of 

 peace of 1783 between Great Britain and the United States was of a 

 peculiar nature, and bore in that nature a character of permanency, 

 not subject, like many of the ordinary contracts between independent 

 nations, to abrogation by a subsequent war between the same parties. 

 His lordship not only considers this as a position of a novel nature, to 

 w hieh ' rreal Britain cannot accede, but as claiming for the diplomatic 

 relation-, of the United Slate-, with her a different degree of perma- 

 nency from that on which her connexions with all other States de- 

 pend, lie denies the right of any one state to assign to a treaty made 

 with her such a peculiarity of character as to make it in duration an 

 dXcepI ion to all other In aties, in order to found on a peculiarity thus 

 a timed an irrevocable title to all indulgences which (he alleges) 

 have all the features of temporary concessions; and he adds, in un- 

 qualified terms, that, " ( treat Britain knows of /i<> < xt < i>ti<>n to the rule 

 that all treaties are put <ni < ml to by a subsequent war between the 

 -aine pari ie ." 



The undersigned explicitly disavows every pretence of claiming. 

 for the diplomatic relations between the United States and Great 

 Britain, a degree of permanency differeni from that of the same rela- 

 tion between either of the partie and all other Powers. He disclaims 

 all pretence of assigning to any treaty between the two nations any 

 peculiarity not founded in the nature of the treaty itself. But he sub- 

 mits to the candor of Hi Maje ty's Government whether the treaty 

 of L783 was uot, from the very nature of its subject-matter, and from 

 the relation- previously e\i ting between the parties to it. peculiar? 

 Whether it wa a treaty which could have been made, between Great 



