DOCUMENTS BEARING ON THE TREATY OF GHENT, 1814. 241 



upon our subscribing to an article abandoning our claim by the 

 Treaty of 1783 to the fisheries within British jurisdiction. Lord 

 Gambier said to him that we surely could not rely upon that as a 

 right. Mr. Clay said he did not wish to enter upon that discussion. 

 Lord Gambier said that if we should not make the stipulation, our 

 fishermen would continue the practice, and that would produce a new 

 quarrel ; that there had been many complaints against our fishermen, 

 and representations made, to which the British Government were 



obliged to pay attention. Mr. Clay therefore wished us to 

 146 reconsider our determination, and still to insist upon both the 



open points for the sake of obtaining the concession upon one. 

 It appears to me, by his own account of his conversation with Lord 

 Gambier, and particularly by declining to discuss our claim of right 

 upon the construction of the treaty, he gave our adversaries encour- 

 agement to adhere upon the point of the fisheries as well as upon 

 the other. 



14th. Began upon the journal of the day before yesterday, and 

 wrote until eleven, the hour of our mission meeting, which was again 

 held in my chamber. I had proposed several alterations, chiefly 

 erasures from Mr. Gallatin's new draft of the note to the British 

 Plenipotentiaries. The most important was one in which he ex- 

 pressed our willingness to agree to an article for negotiating hereafter 

 concerning the Mississippi navigation and the American liberties in 

 the fisheries, provided our claim to those liberties by our construction 

 of the Treaty of 1783 should be in nowise considered as impaired, 

 thereby. Mr. Bayard had proposed an additional amendment, stating 

 that we were forbidden by our instructions to enter upon a discussion 

 respecting the fisheries. I had intended to propose the same amend- 

 ment, but omitted it merely from an apprehension that it would not 

 be adopted. I supported that proposed by Mr. Bayard, but he him- 

 self did not, and it was not admitted. 



No. 20. 1814, December 13: Letter, Lord Gambier and Messrs. Goul- 



burn and Adams to Viscount Gastlereagh. 

 ******* 



In reference to the 8th article, the American Plenipotentiaries 

 stated that they were not authorised to admit the substitution pro- 

 posed in the place of the latter clause of it. That they considered it 

 as unnecessary, inasmuch as it did nothing but stipulate for a future 

 negotiation which might equally take place without it, and it neither 

 bound the parties to engage in it nor precluded them from defeating 

 it, if engaged in, by the extravagance of their demands. But they 

 chiefly objected to -the language of the substituted article as convey- 

 ing that their right to the fisheries depended solely on a provision in 

 the Treaty of 1783, and that this Treaty had been annulled by the 

 war propositions against which they had repeatedly contended, and 

 in which it would be hopeless to expect their acquiescence. That they 

 had no objection to omit the last clause of the 8th article, and to sub 

 stitute another, if it were possible so to word one, as to make the 

 fisheries and the Mississippi the subjects of future negotiation with- 

 out prejudice to either party as to the manner in which his rights 

 were derived. 



