DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 121 



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 

 71 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 herself, in her consent to enter into provisional arti- 

 cles of November 1782. In the third article, Great Britain acknowl- 

 edges 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 variation of language so adapted to produce 

 a different impression; and, above all, that they should have ad- 

 mitted so strange a restriction of a perpetual and indefeasible right 

 as that with which the article concludes, which leaves a right so 

 practical and so beneficial as this is admitted to be, dependent on the 

 will of British subjects, in their character of inhabitants, proprietors, 

 or possessors of the soil, to prohibit 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 dependent on the treaty itself. 



The right of the United States has been asserted upon other argu- 

 ments, which appear to the undersigned not altogether consistent 

 with those that had been previously advanced. It has been argued by 

 the Minister of the United States that the treaty of 1783 did not con- 

 fer upon the United States the liberty of fishing within British juris- 

 diction, and using British territory, but merely recognised a right 

 which they previously had ; and it has been thence inferred that the 

 recognition of this right renders it as perpetual as that of their 

 independence. 



If the treaty of 1783 did not confer the liberties in question, the 

 undersigned cannot understand why. in their support, the point 

 should have been so much pressed, that the treaty is in force notwith- 

 standing the subsequent war. If, as stated by the American Minister, 



