DOCUMENTS BEARING ON THE TREATY OF GHENT, 1814. 247 



the British to adhere to their paragraph, and that Clay is disap- 

 pointed at their having given it up ; and he has so entire an ascend- 

 ency over Mr. Russell, though a New England man and claiming 

 to be a Massachusetts man, that Russell repeatedly told me last week, 

 when I assured him that I would not sign the treaty with an article 

 admitting that our right to any part of the fisheries was forfeited, 

 that he should be sorry to sign a treaty without me, but that he 

 did not think that part of the fisheries an object for which the war 

 should be continued; that he was for insisting upon it as long as 

 possible, but for giving it up at last, if the British would not sign 

 without it. We agreed to meet at half-past seven o'clock this 

 evening. 



No. 26. 181 '4, December 25: Extract from Report of American 

 Plenipotentiaries to United States Secretary of State. 



At the first conference, on the 8th of August, the British plenipo- 

 tentiaries had notified to us that the British Government did not in- 

 tend henceforth to allow to the people of the United States, without 

 an equivalent, the liberties to fish and to dry and cure fish within the 

 exclusive British jurisdiction, stipulated in their favour by the latter 

 part of the third article of the treaty of peace of 1783. And in their 

 note of the 19th August, the British plenipotentiaries had demanded 

 a new stipulation, to secure to British subjects the right of navigating 

 the Mississippi; a demand which, unless warranted by another arti- 

 cle of that same treaty of 1783, we could not perceive that Great 

 Britain had any colourable pretence for making. Our instructions 

 had forbidden us to suffer our right to the fisheries to be brought into 

 discussion, and had not authorised us to make any distinction in the 

 several provisions of the third article of the treaty of 1783, or be- 

 tween that article and any other of the same treaty. We had 

 150 no equivalent to offer for a new recognition of our right to 

 any part of the fisheries, and we had no power to grant any 

 equivalent which might be asked for it by the British Government. 

 We contended that the whole treaty of 1783 must be considered as 

 one entire and permanent compact, not liable, like ordinary treaties, 

 to be abrogated by a subsequent war between the parties to it ; as an 

 instrument recognising the rights and liberties enjoyed by the people 

 of the United States as an independent nation, and containing the 

 terms and conditions on which the two parts of one empire had 

 mutually agreed, thenceforth, to constitute two distinct and separate 

 nations. In consenting, by that treaty, that a part of the North 

 American continent should remain subject to the British jurisdiction, 

 the people of the United States had reserved to themselves the liberty, 

 which they had ever before enjoyed, of fishing upon that part of its 

 coasts, and of drying and curing fish upon the shores, and this 

 reservation had been agreed to by the other contracting party. We 

 saw not why this liberty, then no new grant, but the mere recognition 

 of a prior right always enjoyed, should be forfeited by war, any more 

 than any other of the rights of our national independence; or why 



