UNITED STATES CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 619 



from Britain or from Europe. We possessed, occupied, exercised, 

 and practised them from the beginning. We have done more towards 

 exploring the best fishing grounds and stations, and all the harbors, 

 bays, inlets, creeks, coasts, and shores, where fish were to be found, 

 and had discovered by experiments the best means and methods of 

 preserving, curing, drying, and perfecting the commodity, and done 

 more towards perfecting the commerce in it, than all the Britons, and 

 all the rest of Europe. 



4. We conquered Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, dispossessed the 

 French, both hostile and neutral, and did more, in proportion towards 

 the conquest of Canada, than any other portion of the British empire ; 

 and would and could and should have done the whole, at an easier 

 expense to ourselves, both of men and money, if the British govern- 

 ment would have permitted that union of colonies, which we pro- 

 jected, planned, earnestly desired, and humbly petitioned. In short, 

 we had done more, in proportion, towards protecting and defending 

 all these fisheries against the French, than any other part of the 

 British empire. For all these reasons, if there is a people under 

 heaven who could advance a claim or a color of a pretension to any 

 exclusive privileges in the fisheries, or any rights in one part of the 

 old British empire more than another, that people are the inhabitants 

 of the United States of America, especially of New England. But 

 we set up no claims but those asserted and acknowledged in the 

 treaty of 1783. These we do assert, and these we will have and 

 maintain. 



As you ask my opinion, it is that stipulations in acknowledgment 

 of antecedent rights, in affirmance of maxims of equity and princi- 

 ples of natural and public law, if they are suspended during war, 

 are revived in full force on the restoration of peace. Former treaties, 

 not formally repeated in a new treaty, are presumed to be received 

 and acknowledged. The fisheries are therefore ours, and the naviga- 

 tion of the Mississippi theirs, that is the British, as much as ever. 

 I will answer any question you may ask. 



Extract from " Writings of Albert Gallatin" "by Henry Adams, 



pub. 1879. 

 ***** 



Mr. Gallatin to J. Q. Adams. 



No. 87. PARIS, 6th November, 1818. 



SIR, Anxious from public considerations to return to Paris as soon 

 as possible, I left London on the 22d ult. The convention had been 

 signed on the 20th, and the time left to write our joint despatches 

 was so short that, although I hope nothing material was omitted, it 

 may be useful to add some further details and observations. On the 

 subject of the fisheries, the abstract question of our right had been 

 so ably discussed in your two notes to the British government that 

 we had nothing to add to that branch of the argument. We could 

 only, and we did it with some effect, demonstrate that, with respect 

 at least to territorial rights, Great Britain herself had not heretofore 

 considered them as abrogated by the mere fact of an intervening war. 



