DOCUMENTS BEARING ON THE TREATY OF GHENT, 1814. 271 



case of a war, consider the convention as abrogated, but the privileges 

 as existing, without reference to their origin. But they and we, I 

 trust, are forever admonished against the stratagem of demanding a 

 surrender, in the form of notifying a forfeiture. They and we are 

 aware, forever, that nothing but our own renunciation can deprive us 

 of the right. 



The second article of this same convention affords a demonstra- 

 tion equally decisive, how utterly insignificant and worthless, in the 

 estimation of the British government, was this direfully dreaded 

 navigation of the Mississippi. The article gives us the 49th parallel 

 of latitude for the boundary, and neither the navigation of the river, 

 nor access to it, was even asked in return. 



******* 



No. 30. 1822, June 27: Extract from Mr. Russell's Reply to Mr. 



J. Q. Adams. 



The principle, that the treaty of 1783 was not, on account of it pe- 

 culiar character, abrogated by the war, Mr. Adams not only reasserts, 

 but alleges to have obtained, when first suggested by him at Ghent, 

 the unanimous assent of the American mission. The proof of this 

 allegation appears to be inferred from the signature, by all that mis- 

 sion, of a note, to the British ministers, of the 10th of November, in 

 which that principle was partially adopted. It has already been 

 seen, even from the avowal of Mr. Adams himself, that the para- 

 graph, offered by Mr. Clay, admitting that doctrine, was a substitute 

 to a proposition which the minority had opposed. To adopt, par- 

 tially, in the spirit of compromise, a doctrine, as a pretext to preserve 

 the fishing privilege and to get rid of a proposition confirmative of 

 the British right to the navigation of the Mississippi, cannot fairly 

 be considered as an unanimous acknowledgment by the American 

 mission, of the orthodoxy of that doctrine. The constitution of the 

 United States was, avowedly, the result of compromise, and thence 

 some, at least of those who signed that instrument, must necessarily 

 have subscribed to provisions which they did not desire, and to opin- 

 ions which they did not approve. The inference of Mr. Adams is. 

 therefore, not correct. I do not recollect, indeed, that any member 

 of the mission, excepting Mr. Adams himself, appeared to be a very 

 zealous believer in that doctrine. Even Mr. Gallatin, in his separate 

 letter of the 25th of December, 1814, speaks only of this doctrine as 

 one that had been assumed. Sure it is that the minority con- 

 sented to admit that doctrine as an expedient only to prevent 

 163 the proposition, already decided on by the majority, from con- 

 stituting an article of our project. So far and no farther were 

 the minority willing to go in adopting that doctrine, but whenever 

 it was proposed to sanction the British right to navigate the Missis- 

 sippi, they uniformly resisted it. 



Mr. Adams also asserts that the proposal confirming the British 

 right to the navigation of the Mississippi and ours to the fishing 

 privilege, was made not by a majority, but by the whole of the 

 American mission, and refers to the protocol of the conference of the 

 1st of December, at which that proposal was, at length, made, and to 



