14 COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



colleagues were divided in opinion. It was then that Mr. Adams, 

 for the first time, made the suggestion, as an alternative, that 



18 the matter of the fisheries should be dropped out of the nego- 

 tiations altogether, and the ground taken that (App., p. 138) 



the whole right to the fisheries was recognized as a part of our na- 

 tional independence, that it could not be abrogated by the war, and 

 needed no stipulation for its renewal. 



His suggestion was not accepted at the time, but on the 7th No- 

 vember it was again discussed and was then agreed to, as appears 

 from Mr. Adams' diary of that date, as a compromise. Mr. Russell, 

 one of the negotiators, during a subsequent controversy with Mr. 

 Adams, speaks of the incident in the following terms (App., 

 p. 162) : 



The principle, that the treaty of 1783 was not, pn account of its 

 peculiar character, abrogated by the war, Mr. Adams not only re- 

 asserts, but alleges to have obtained, when first suggested by him at 

 Ghent, the unanimous assent of the American mission. The proof of 

 this allegation appears to be inferred from the signature, by all that 

 mission, of a note, to the British ministers, of the 10th of November, 

 in which that principle was partially adopted. It has already been 

 seen, even from the avowal of Mr. -Adams himself, that the para- 

 graph, offered by Mr. Clay, admitting that doctrine, was a substitute 

 to a proposition which the minority had opposed. To adopt, par- 

 tially, in the spirit of compromise, a doctrine, as a pretext to preserve 

 the fishing privilege and to get rid of a proposition confirmative of 

 the British right to the navigation of the Mississippi, cannot fairly 

 be considered as an unanimous acknowledgment by the American 

 mission, of the orthodoxy of that doctrine. The constitution of the 

 United States was, avowedly, the result of compromise, and thence 

 some, at least of those who signed that instrument, must necessarily 

 have subscribed to provisions which they did not desire, and to opin- 

 ions which they did not approve. The inference of Mr. Adams is, 

 therefore, not correct. I do not recollect (indeed, that any member 

 of the mission, excepting Mr. Adams himself, appeared to be a very 

 zealous believer in that doctrine. Even Mr. Gallatin. in his separate 

 letter of the 25th of December, 1814, speaks only of this doctrine as 

 one that had been assumed. Sure, it is that the minority consented 

 to admit that doctrine as an expedient only to prevent the proposition, 

 already decided on by the majority, from constiuting an article of our 

 project. So far and no farther were the minority willing to go in 

 adopting that doctrine, but whenever it was proposed to sanction the 

 British right to navigate the Mississippi, they uniformly resisted it. 



In Mr. Russell's separate Report to the Secretary of State (App., p. 

 150) he expressed his entire dissent from Mr. Adams' view, 



19 and stated that in his opinion the point was not tenable. The 

 opinions of other members of the Commission to the same effect 



might be referred to, although the point was adopted by the Com- 

 mission as a weapon for negotiation. 



