DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 303 



nouncement, which I have also here. I read from the Union of the 

 7th instant : 



THE FISHERIES DIFFICULTY. BOSTON, August 6. Information has been re- 

 ceived in this city that a remonstrance to the British Government against the 

 Americans fishing within three miles of the coast, even if reciprocity be granted, 

 is circulating in Halifax, and has received a great number of prominent signa- 

 tures. The Halifax Acadian and Recorder considers the question fraught with 

 much danger, and that war between the two nations is not improbable. 



And thus, Sir, we may, for aught we know, have negotiated away 

 by Treaty a branch of our revenue, with the hope that we would 

 silence the roaring lion; but the lion still roars, it seems, and will 

 roar until he frightens us put of those haunts the participation in 

 which we acquired by original occupation, if not otherwise; which 

 we retained as a constitutive element of our separate existence as a 

 nation; which war itself could not wrest from us; which we hold 

 under no grace or favour of any one but under the sufferance of 

 God alone, and under the highest sanctions of the Laws of Nations; 

 for, in the language of the now redeemed negotiators who signed 

 the Convention of 1818, ours is a right, which cannot exclusively 

 belong to, or be granted by any nation. Sir, I ask it of you, would 

 that be an attitude becoming this great country? But I believe not 

 in these rumours; it cannot have escaped that wise and clear-sighted 

 person, who now holds the seals of the State, and whose great mind 

 and exalted patriotism are equal to any emergencies, that to negotiate 

 under such circumstances, and sign a treaty, whatever its merits in 

 other respects be, were to sink in the dust what of pride, what of 

 dignity, what of honour, we have grown to in the rapid race which 

 we had been running since we became a nation. 



But, it may be asked, what would you have this Government to 

 do? Sir, as I cannot suppose that this debate is an idle and un- 

 meaning ceremony; as I know too much of the distinguished Sena- 

 tor who so creditably occupies the chair in the Committee on Foreign 

 Relations to indulge the least thought that he could have moved in 

 so grave a matter with no view to some practical end, to the attain- 

 ment of some object of public interest, I will take it for granted 

 that his aim was to provoke an expression through which the sense 

 of this Senate, and, as far as this Senate may be a proper organ of 

 the nation, the sense of our people might become manifest, and be 

 atended to where otherwise it might have been overlooked and 

 unheeded. 



Mr. SEWARD. Will the honourable Senator allow me to ask him 

 whether we are to understand him as supposing that it was the in- 

 tention of the honourable Chairman of the Committee on Foreign 

 Relations that the sense of the Senate should be taken before any 

 negotiations were entered into, or before any treaty was made ? 



Mr. SOULE. There are two attributes of this body under which we 

 act in two different capacities. The one connects us with the Execu- 

 tive, and creates duties which we perform in executive session. The 

 other constitutes us a component part of the Legislative power of 

 the country, and enables us to address ourselves without any reserve 

 but that which a proper regard for the interests of the nation may 

 impose, to all questions of public policy, whether internal or external, 

 and to which it may be our wish to call the attention of the country. 



