238 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



He said that we had only assumed it as the principle upon which 

 our Government had instructed us not to bring the fisheries into 

 discussion ; that he did not consider himself as pledged to it at all as 



his own opinion. 



144 I told him that I was pledged to it as mine; and believed 

 the ground to be perfectly tenable and solid. I was confident 

 it could be supported, too, for our people would exercise it, and 

 could not be prevented from exercising it, without the constant 

 maintenance of an armed force to drive them from it far more 

 expensive than the object would be worth, and more than Great 

 Britain would maintain. I added that the present British proposi- 

 tion proved most clearly to me two things: one, that they did not 

 consider our ground in regatd to the fisheries as weak or untenable, 

 since they offered to abandon all pretensions to the right of navigat- 

 ing the Mississippi if we would give up our claim to that part of the 

 fisheries, such as it is; the other, that they considered that part of 

 our fishing rights as more than an equivalent for the navigation of 

 the Mississippi, since we had offered to continue both, the one for the 

 other, which they declined, and proposed to us in its stead to abandon 

 both the one for the other. 



Mr. Gallatin admitted the correctness of my first inference, but 

 Mr. Clay disputed the second. He said the offer of the British to 

 abandon both rights did not prove that they thought ours worth more 

 than theirs, but that they could obtain more for conceding it. 



We adjourned to meet again at eleven to-morrow morning. 



No. 16. 1814, December 11: Extract from Mr. J. Q. Adams'* Memoirs 

 referring to a Conference with his Colleagues. 



Mr. Gallatin said it was an extraordinary thing that the question 

 of peace or war now depended solely upon two points, in which the 

 people of the State of Massachusetts alone were interested Moose 

 Island, and the fisheries within British jurisdiction. 



I said that was the very perfidious character of the British propo- 

 sitions. They wished to give us the appearance of having sacrificed 

 the interests of the Eastern section of the Union to those of the West- 

 ern, to enable the disaffected in Massachusetts to say, the Government 

 of the United States has given up our territory and our fisheries 

 merely to deprive the British of their right to navigate the Mis- 

 sissippi. 



Mr. Russell said it was peculiarly unfortunate that the interests 

 thus contested were those of a disaffected part of the country. 



Mr. Clay said that he would do nothing to satisfy disaffection and 

 treason ; he would not yield anything for the sake of them. 



"But," said I, "you would not g_ive disaffection and treason the 

 right to say to the people that their interests had been sacrificed ? " 



He said, " No." But he was for a war three years longer. He had 

 no doubt that three years more of war would make us a warlike peo- 

 ple, and that then we should come out of the war with honor. 

 Whereas at present, even upon the best terms we could possibly ob- 

 tain, we shall have only a half-formed army, and half retrieve our 



