DOCUMENTS BEARING ON THE TREATY OP GHENT, 1814. 267 



singularly professes not to perceive between the fishing liberties 

 and the Mississippi navigation, not only naturally arose, but forced 

 itself upon the American plenipotentiaries. They had saved the fish- 

 ing liberties from surrender, as they had been specially instructed 

 to do, by asserting that the treaty of 1783 had not been abrogated 

 ipso facto by the-war. Two days before receiving this counter projet, 

 they had received from Washington a fresh instruction, expressly 

 authorizing them to conclude a treaty on the basis of the status ante 

 bellum, including, of course, the fishing liberty on one side, and the 

 navigation of the Mississippi on the other. They could not, there- 

 fore, consistently with those instructions, either reject this British 

 demand, or abandon to surrender the fisheries. They offered, there- 

 fore, the amendment containing the renewed acknowledgment of 

 both ; and they said to the British plenipotentiaries : We have told you 

 that we consider all the rights, secured to us by the treaty of 1783. 

 as still in force. What we demand, if you assent to it, we must yield 

 in return. If, as we say, the treaty of 1783 is yet in force, you have the 

 right of navigating the Mississippi, and we have the fishing rights and 

 liberties unimpaired. If. as you say, the treaty is abrogated, how can 

 you claim the right of navigating the Mississippi? You must admit 

 the one, or not demand the other. We offer you the alternative of a 

 new stipulated admission of both, or a total omission of both. We 

 offer you in application the choice of our principle or of your own. 



The British commissioners took the proposal for reference to their 

 government, by whom it was immediately rejected. But, to show 

 how anxious they were to obtain from us the surrender of our fishing 

 liberties, and how cheaply they valued the right of navigating the 

 Mississippi, as one of the last expedients of negotiation, they offered 

 us an article agreeing that, after the peace, the parties would further 

 negotiate " respecting the terms, conditions, and regulations, under 

 which the inhabitants of the United States " should again enjoy 

 the fishing liberties, " in consideration of a fair equivalent, to be 

 agreed upon between his majesty and the said United States, and 

 granted by the said United States for such liberty aforesaid;" and a 

 reciprocal stipulation with regard to the British right of navigating 

 the Mississippi. As the parties after the peace would have been 

 just as competent further to negotiate on these points, if so disposed, 

 without this article as with it, its only effect would have been a 

 mutual surrender, on the American side, of the fishing liberties, 

 jnd on the British side, of the right to navigate the Mississippi; 

 vith this difference, that we should have surrendered, in direct 

 violation of our instructions, a real, existing, practical liberty, which, 

 e\en in the war of our Independence, had been deemed of the highest 

 importance, and at its close had been, with infinite difficulty, secured; 

 a liberty, of which that portion of the Union, whom it immediately 

 concerns, had been, from the time of the treaty of 1783, in the con- 

 stant, real, p.nd useful possession; while the British would have sur- 

 rendered absolutely nothing a right which, by inference from their 

 own principle, was rbrogated by the war; a right which, under 

 the tre-'ty of 1783. thev had enjoyed for thirty years, without ever 

 using it, and which, in all human probability, never would have 

 1G1 been of more beneficial use to the British nation than would 

 be to the people of the United States the right of navigating 

 the Bridgewater canal, or the Danube. 



