PEEIOD FEOM 1836 TO 1854. 553 



eral rule, but insisted that there were exceptions to it ; and we denied 

 altogether its application to the treaty of :83. That was not a treaty 

 to be judged by common rules. It split an empire in twain. Britain 

 did not grant us our Independence by that treaty, but acknowledged 

 it. She did not grant us our boundaries. She agreed to them — She 

 did not grant us our fishing rights — She agreed to them. All these 

 we won in arms. We treated with our great adversary for peace, and 

 desired it; but we treated as a co-equal sovereign nation. Had not 

 the fishing rights we insisted upon been agreed to, the treaty of peace 

 would not have been concluded. It may be here incidentally men- 

 tioned as both curious and illustrative that the elder Adams took as a 

 motto from his seal " Piscamur et oenamur ut olimf meaning that 

 our fishing grounds and hunting grounds must be as hitherto — 

 the latter then having reference to the Mississippi as our western 

 boundary. We did not after the separation, claim the right to cure 

 and dry fish upon her shores. That would have been to trench upon 

 her territory ; but we did insist upon our full right to fish in the sea, 

 and in all the open bays and gulfs where we had been accustomed to 

 fish before. We considered these rights as fixed and irrevocable- 

 like our boundaries, or our Independence. They were founded in 

 beneficence, as producing human food ; a reason why they should be 

 the more liberally interpreted and extended. They had also a para- 

 mount foundation in equity for us from the historical fact that in 

 past time before the Revolution, when we were all British subjects 

 together, the people of New England had done more by far to dis- 

 cover and use all these very fishing grounds, than any other people 

 of the British empire. Mr. Monroe while Secretary of State under 

 President Madison, in giving instructions to our ministers at Ghent 

 in 1814 in regard to the fisheries, in case any attempt should be made 

 by Britain to demand their surrender, used this emphatic language; 

 viz, " they [with other rights mentioned] must not be brought into 

 question, and if insisted on, your negotiations will cease." 



Our whole doctrine was powerfully argued and illustrated by Mr. 

 \ lams when Minister in London after (he treaty of Ghent, in two 

 diplomatic note-, one to Lord Bathurst in September 1815, the other 

 to Lord Castlereagh, in January 181G. Lord Bathurst replied, in an 

 elaborate note to Mr. Adams, of October 18ir>. In this note he fully 

 made known thai England was not less unequivocal in the opposite 



doctrine. The two countries being decidedly at issue, and. according 



to the ground England took-, no treaty regulation of the subject 

 being m existence, her cruiser began to capture our fishing vessels 

 in the waters where we thought our right to go was as complete as 

 ever. The danger was imminent Collision might take place at any 

 moment. TJien it wa- thai further captures were forborne until the 

 two government* could calmly and deliberately interpose in the hope 

 of some 'ii factory adjustment. This summary presents the precise 

 attitude of the two nation- and their aegotiators, when the negotia- 

 t ion of L818 opened. 



Afti'T- protracted difficulties, anxieties, and hesitations on this 

 momentous topic, momentous because we on our side thought that a 

 rupture be! ween the t wo countries would ultimately follow the failure 

 to arrange it. the negotiation, which commenced in A.ugust, isi8, 

 happily terminated m the signature of the convention on the 20th 

 of October of that year. 



