DESPATCHES, EEPOETS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 307 



I disclaim the idea, that these restrictions impute want of patri- 

 otism or of fidelity to the Administration ; but, when taken together 

 with the facts which they assume, they seem to me to import a censure 

 of this effect and extent, viz. : that Her Britannic Majesty's Govern- 

 ment has recently set up a new construction of the Convention of 

 1818, by which it proposes now to draw lines from chief headland to 

 chief headland, and thus to exclude American fishermen from the 

 Bays of Fundy, Chaleurs, and Miramichi, and also from the Straits 

 of Northumberland, and the Gut of Canso, all of which have hitherto 

 been enjoyed by our fishermen; and that Her Britannic Majesty's 

 Government has sent a large naval force into those waters to enforce 

 that new construction, and has so attempted to bring us to negotiate 

 for maintaining national rights at the cannon's mouth: that the 

 Executive has not acted with sufficient promptness and decision, has 

 not properly resented an insult and an indignity received, and 

 182 has already negotiated, or may be negotiating or about to nego- 

 tiate, in the presence of that naval force, in derogation the 

 interests or dignity or honour of the United States, and that Great 

 Britain has been emboldened and rendered thus insoknt by previous 

 diplomatic triumphs over the present Administration. 



Sir, I take leave to say that there is a presumption, a violent pre- 

 sumption, against the soundness and the justness of all such censures. 

 There is no want of firmness or of boldness in asserting American 

 rights here, or in the House of Representatives. Experience has 

 shown that the Executive Department has generally been quite as firm 

 and as bold as Congress. Sir, the fisheries are a commercial interest. 

 By peculiar fidelity in guarding such interests, this Administration 

 has deservedly gained the confidence of the commercial classes, the 

 conservative classes of the country. The fisheries are practically and 

 peculiarly a Northern interest. In the geographical balance, they 

 were once weighed against the free navigation of the Mississippi. 

 The President of the United States and the Secretary of State are 

 Northern men. Each began, and, and when he shall have closed his 

 public career, each will rest in the associations of the North. 



More than this; the fisheries are an interest of the States of Massa- 

 chusetts and Maine, which practically are undivided and inseparable 

 in commercial fortunes. The Secretary of State, in whose depart- 

 ment this subject properly belongs, is a man of Massachusetts it is 

 too much to say the MAN OF MASSACHUSETTS? The ocean, with its 

 fisheries, washes the shore of the farm on which he dwells. Nay, Sir, 

 he is an angler himself, I am told, and of course he is a good one, for 

 he is not half and half in anything. He tills the sea, and I fear his 

 principal harvests are gathered upon it; are gathered with the line, 

 and not with the sickle. There is a strong presumption that the Sec- 

 retary will be faithful to an interest so near to himself, and the con- 

 stituency to whom he chiefly owes the long public life which he has 

 enjoyed. A distinguished artist of our country has enriched our 

 academies with a national painting. It represents the Secretary of 

 State in debate defending the honour and fame of Massachusetts 

 against the assault of an eminent orator of South Carolina, Mr. 

 HAYNE. That is a heroic piece; let honourable Senators here take 

 care that they do not provoke the artist to produce a comic counter- 

 part, in which the Senators from Arkansas and Louisiana [Mr. BOR- 

 LAND and Mr. Souus] may be presented in the act of rescuing Massa- 



