248 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



we should need a new stipulation for its enjoyment more than we 

 needed a new article to declare that the King of Great Britain treated 

 with us as free, sovereign, and independent States. We stated this 

 principle in general terms to the British plenipotentiaries, in the note 

 which we sent to them with our projet of the treaty, and we alleged 

 it as the ground upon which no new stipulation was deemed by our 

 Government necessary to secure to the people of the United States 

 all the rights and liberties stipulated in their favour by the treaty of 

 1783. No reply to that part of our note was given by the British 

 plenipotentiaries, but, in returning our projet of a treaty, they added 

 a clause to one of the articles, stipulating a right for British subjects 

 to navigate the Mississippi. Without adverting to the ground of 

 prior and immemorial usage, if the principle were just that the treaty 

 of 1783, from its peculiar character, remained in force in all its parts, 

 notwithstanding the war, no new stipulation was necessary to secure 

 to the subjects of Great Britain the right of navigating the Missis- 

 sippi, so far as that right was secured by the treaty of 1783, as, on 

 the other hand, no stipulation was necessary to secure to the people 

 of the United States the liberty to fish, and to dry and cure fish, 

 within the exclusive jurisdiction of Great Britain. If they asked the 

 navigation of the Mississippi as a new claim, they could not expect 

 we should grant it without an equivalent ; if they asked it because it 

 had been granted in 1783, they must recognise the claim of the people 

 of the United States to the liberty to fish and to dry and cure fish, in 

 question. To place both points beyond all future controversy, a ma- 

 jority of us determined to offer to admit an article confirming both 

 the rights, or we offered at the same time to be silent in the treaty 

 upon both, and to leave out altogether the article defining the bound- 

 ary from the Lake of the Woods westward. They finally agreed to 

 this last proposal, but not until they had proposed an article stipu- 

 lating for a future negotiation for an equivalent to be given by Great 

 Britain for the navigation of the Mississippi, and by the United 

 States for the liberty as to the fisheries within British jurisdiction. 

 This article was unnecessary with regard to its professed object, since 

 both Governments had it in their power, without it, to negotiate upon 

 these subjects if they pleased. We rejected it, although its adoption 

 would have secured the boundary of the forty-ninth degree of lati- 

 tude west of the Lake of the Woods, because it would have been a 

 formal abandonment, on our part, of our claim to the liberty as to 

 the fisheries, recognised by the treaty of 1783. 



No. 27. 1814, December 25: Extract from Mr. J . Q. Adams' Memoirs. 



In mentioning to the Secretary of State the principle on which we 

 had relied respecting the fisheries, I had stated that we considered 

 the treaty of 1783 as a permanent contract, no part of which was 

 liable to be abrogated by the subsequent war. Mr. Clay, with the 

 assent of Mr. Russell, had altered it to read ; we thought it might be 

 considered, and Russell afterwards had written it, we contended it 

 might be considered. Mr. Russell made out the fair copy of the des- 



