274 APPKND1X TO BRITISH COTJXTEB CASE. 



continent and islands being divided between the United States, the English, and 

 French, (for the last retained two small islands merely for this object,) the 

 right of fishing was appropriated to tliem also. 



I did not entertain a doubt that the object of the British govern- 

 ment then was, to exclude us from the whole of this fishery, unless 

 upon our own coast ; nor do I now, that if we had then acquiesced in 

 their principle, they would have excluded us from it after the peace 

 entirely. 



I did, therefore, feel a deep and earnest solicitude for them. Nor 

 was that solicitude allayed by the discovery that there was in the 

 heart of the mission itself, a disposition and an influence operating 

 against them almost as inflexibly, and, in my estimation, far more 

 dangerously, than the British adversary himself. 



There were but two possible ways, after the British notification, of 

 preserving these rights and liberties from total extinction. The one 

 was, by obtaining a new recognition of them in the treaty, which 

 could not be done without offering an equivalent; and the other was, 

 by asserting that they had not been forfeited by the war, and would 

 remain in full vigour, although the treaty should be concluded with- 

 out such an article. 



In preparing the draught of the treaty, Mr. Gallatin had drawn 

 an article, stipulating anew the recognition, and offering, as the equiv- 

 alent, the recognition of the British right to navigate the Mississippi, 

 contained in the same treaty of 1783, and of which the British pleni- 

 potentiaries had demanded the renewal. 



Mr. Gallatin was a citizen of the Western Country, and as inca- 

 pable as any other member of the mission, of sacrificing an essential 

 interest of one quarter of the Union, to a minor interest of another. 

 I was, therefore, profoundly mortified to see his article objected to 

 on a principle of conflicting sectional interest, and still more so, to 

 hear Mr. Russell observe, after his opinion had been disclosed by his 

 vote, that the fisheries were an interest of a dissaffected part of the 

 country. I was as far as Mr. Russell from approving the policy or 

 the measures then predominating in New-England : but to cast away 

 and surrender to the enemy the birthright of my country, an interest 

 as lasting as the ocean arid the shores of my native land, for a merely 

 momentary aberration, rather of its legislature than its people, was so 

 far from meeting my concurrence, that it sickened my soul to hear it 

 hinted from one of her own sons. 



Considered merely and exclusively was reference to sectional 

 interests, Mr. Gallatin's proposed article was fair and just. It pro- 

 posed that both interests should be placed on the same footing on 

 which they had stood before the war. The first and paramount duty 

 of the government was to bring the nation out of the war, with all its 

 great interests preserved. It was not to gain, an advantage for one 

 section, by the loss of an advantage to another. The principle of 

 Mr. Gallatin's article was, that neither section should gain or lose by 

 the issue of the war. The principle of the objection to it was, that 

 the West should gain, by the sacrifice of the interest of the East : and 

 the main motive assigned for it was that the East was a dissaffected 

 part of the country. 



******* 



The objection to Mr. Gallatin's proposed article, therefore, was an 

 objection to securing to New England the continued enjoyment of 



