122 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC., 



founclland, support in the enjoyment of the liberties as so limited ; but 

 the plenipotentiaries went on to remark, that the nature of the ques- 

 tion seemed, in their opinion, to be varied, by France having, as seen 

 in the notes of Viscount Chateaubriand to Mr. Gallatin, placed her 

 claim to exclude the United States from the fishery in dispute on 

 engagements contracted by the United States with France prior to 

 the convention of 1818, and also on the fact of the United States hav- 

 ing opened discussions upon the whole subject with France. They 

 further remarked, that they had understood from one of their own 

 negotiators of the convention of 1818 that the American negotiators 

 had been apprised at that period by Great Britain of the French right 

 to fish on this coast. At all events, they said that, as the subject 

 stood, they must decline entertaining it as one susceptible of being 

 handled in any effective way at present in this negotiation. What- 

 ever rights or remedies the United States were entitled to from Great 

 Britain upon the occasion could be brought into view, if thought 

 necessary, by a direct application to the British Government, in the 

 usual form. With this intimation they would consider the subject, 

 for so they concluded with saying, as no longer upon the list of those 

 which it was the object of our endeavors to mould into a general 

 treaty or convention between the two States. 



I said to the British plenipotentiaries, in reply, that I had certainly 

 not anticipated all the above avowals. I did not admit that the fact 

 of the United States having opened a correspondence upon this sub- 

 ject with France could diminish in any degree their right to resort 

 to Great Britain, remarking that it could scarcely have been expected 

 that a forbearance on their part to hasten to this resort in the first 

 instance, from considerations of delicacy both towards Britain and 

 France, was now to be turned against them. Forbearance had been 

 due to France, at first, to avoid the appearance of recurring, on a 

 question between her and the United States, to the aid of a third 

 power ; and to Great Britain it had been due, as it was hoped that the 

 case might have been settled without putting her upon her duty of 

 interfering. As little did I admit the allegation of the French 

 Government, that the United States were excluded from this fish- 

 ery by their previous engagements to France, was entitled to any 

 weight. These engagements, I said, had been taken under treaties 

 long since expired, and the provisions of which were otherwise 

 nugatory as to any just bearing upon this controversy. Here I 

 adverted to the argument used by Mr. Gallatin in reply to the notes 

 of the Viscount Chateaubriand relative to the operation of the tenth 

 article of the treaty with France of 1778, and of the twenty-seventh 

 article of the convention with her of 1800, arguments which completed 

 the demonstration, as you had remarked in your despatch, that the 

 pretension of France to an exclusive fishery was not to be supported. 

 I admitted, as one of the American negotiators of the convention of 

 1818, that we had heard of the French right at that time, but never 

 that it was exclusive. Such an inference was contradicted not only by 

 the plain meaning of the article in the convention of 1818, but by the 

 whole course and spirit of the negotiation, which, it was well known, 

 had been drawn out into anxious and protracted discussions upon the 

 fishery question. As regarded the arguments of Viscount Chateau- 

 briand. I reminded the British plenipotentiaries that whilst part of 

 them labored to give to obsolete treaties, as against the United States, 



