3-1 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC., PRIOR TO TREATY OF 1818 



Britain by that treaty, said the journals, had given back, and this 

 when she was at the height of influence and power, to France, her 

 great European rival, the enjoyment of the Newfoundland fisheries, 

 from which twenty years of victorious warfare upon the ocean had 

 totally driven her; and now the calamity was to be doubled, by a like 

 gift to her rival in the other hemisphere! 



British statesmen, more calm, thought and acted otherwise. They 

 had not been deterred by the anticipation of clamor from entering 

 into the article. They felt that if they had a duty to fulfill by guard- 

 ing British interests on the one hand, they w T ere not released from the 

 obligation of looking to the just rights of an independent nation on 

 the other. It was in this spirit that a formidable cause of collision 

 was removed, without impairing the honour, or, as is believed, the 

 essential interests of either country. 



Yet it is proper for the United States to bear in mind, that Great 

 Britain still holds to the doctrine that the war of 1812 totally abro- 

 gated the original treaty of 1783 on the question of the fisheries; the 

 inference from which may be, that she would also hold this convention 

 of 1818 to be abrogated on the same point by a future war, notwith- 

 standing our insertion of words of perpetuity. Hence, apart from the 

 historical interest of this part of the negotiation, there is an existing 

 interest in it from the contingent importance of the same question in 

 time to come. 



