DESPATCHES, EEPOETS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 315 



Convention of 1818. So in that year the Secretary of the Treasury 

 addressed a circular letter to the collectors of customs, directing 

 them to inform the American fishermen not to encroach " upon the 

 fishing grounds secured exclusively to British fishermen by the Con- 

 vention of 1818." So in 1839, Mr. Vail, Acting Secretary of State, 

 in an official communication, said: 



Under the supposition that many of the seizures had been made upon insuffi- 

 cient grounds, and in order, if possible, to preclude for the future the recurrence 

 of such proceedings, the Acting Secretary of State, in a note dated the 10th of 

 July, called the attention of the British Minister to the cases of seizure which 

 had come to the knowledge of the Department, and requested him to direct 

 the attention of the provincial authorities to the ruinous consequences of the 

 seizures to the owners of the vessels, whatever might be the issue of the legal 

 proceedings instituted against them, and to exhort them to exercise great cau- 

 tion and forbearance in future, in order that American citizens, not manifestly 

 encroaching upon British rights, should not be subject to interruption in the 

 pursuit of their lawful vocations. 



Sir, I think you now see that this present Administration has 

 roared, in tones of defiance of Great Britain, at least as loud as these 

 utterances of the Administrations of Mr. Van Buren and of General 

 Jackson. It has been a ground of censure, and a cause of excitement 

 here, that no notice was given by the British Government to the 

 United States that they had changed their construction of the 

 Treaty. That is all right. It is a good ground of complaint, pro- 

 vided the condition holds. If they had changed the construction of 

 the Treaty, they ought to have given us notice; but if they had not 

 changed, then the complaint of want of notice must fail. 



It has been complained here that the President withheld informa- 

 tion. It is enough to know that he had nothing official worth com- 

 municating; and that when requested he furnished all that he had. 



If I have been successful, I have shown the Senate that there is not, 

 in the present difficulties about the fisheries, any ground of alarm 

 precisely for the reason that nothing new has occurred. That cir- 

 cumstances remain just exactly as they were; that there is no ground 

 to apprehend a war, because the dispositions of the British Govern- 

 ment remain just as pacific as they were before ; and the dispositions 

 of the Colonies to retaliate were well known before; and that if 

 there were reasons for censure in any quarter, it must fall else- 

 where, and not on the Administration. The President transferred 

 the subject to Congress last December. The Senate implies that 

 this was right, because it rejects the idea of negotiation. Who, then, 

 has a right to complain? Is it Congress, that the Executive has not 

 acted ? or is it the Administration, that Congress has been silent ? 



I shall be told, indeed, that the notice of the British Minister was 

 ambiguous. But it was no more ambiguous than the well-under- 

 stood reserve practised by that Government for a dozen and more 

 years past.* 



The Executive is not to be censured for not having resisted the 

 British force, for there has been none there in hostility to resist. 

 It has not resented indignity, because there has been no indignity 

 offered. That is so, unless the Government of the United States 

 shall claim a right to prescribe to the Government of Great Britain 

 what portion of her naval force, and of what kind, she shall main- 

 tain on this station, and what on that. I should like to see how the 

 Senate of the United States would regard a notice from the British 



