DOCUMENTS BEARING ON THE TREATY OF GHENT, 1814. 275 



the fisheries, because the price of its purchase would be to permit 

 British subjects to travel a highway in the Western Country. It was 

 impossible to make of it any thing more; and deeply concerned as I 

 felt for the fate of the fisheries, I greatly regretted that the objection 

 was made to it. Not that I expected it would be accepted by the 

 British plenipotentiaries. I too well knew the value which they set 

 upon the fisheries, and the worthlessness at which they must estimate 

 the naked right to them of navigating the Mississippi, to consider it 

 as probable that they would accept the proposal. But our duty as 

 ministers of tke Union, charged with the defence of all its rights and 



liberties staked upon the conflict, and specially instructed not 

 165 to surrender the fisheries, was to use every fair exertion to 



preserve them. And Mr. Gallatin's proposal was one of the 

 only two possible modes of effecting it. 



Nevertheless, as a strong and earnest opposition to proposing the 

 article was made, avowedly founded upon a supposed interest merely 

 sectional; after a discussion continued through six successive days, 

 at the last of which only I had taken part, and before the vote was 

 taken, I did, on the 4th of November, declare myself prepared either 

 to propose Mr. Gallatin's article, or to take the ground that all the 

 rights and liberties in the fisheries were recognized as a part of our 

 national independence, that they could not be abrogated by the war, 

 and needed no stipulation for their renewal to assert this principle 

 in the note to be sent to the British plenipotentiaries, with the project 

 of the treaty, and to omit the article altogether. 



******* 



[Referring to Mr. Russell's dissenting letter to the Secretary of 

 State, Mr. Adams said :] 



This letter, Mr. Russell writes, not in cypher; commits it to the 

 ocean, before hostilities have ceased; and exposes it in various ways 

 to be intercepted by the enemy. It reaches, however, its destination, 

 after the ratification of the peace, and just about the time when 

 British cruisers, stationed on the fishing grounds, warn all American 

 fishing vessels not to approach within SIXTY miles of the shores. 

 Such is the practical exposition given by the British government of 

 their meaning in the indefinite notification that they intended to ex- 

 clude us from fishing within the limits of British sovereignty: and 

 that exposition was supported by all the historical public law appli- 

 cable to the case, and by the most eminent writers upon the law of 

 nations. The complaints of the American fishermen, thus inter- 

 rupted in their honest industry, and interdicted from the exercise 

 of it, and the argument of Mr. Russell to demonstrate the abrogation 

 of the treaty of 1783 by war, and the consequent discontinuance of the 

 fishing privilege, (as he terms it) must have been received about the 

 same time, by the Secretary of State. If the argument had been as 

 successful, as it had been laboriously wrought, what a happy answer 

 it would have suppli-ed for Mr. Monroe to the complaints of the fish- 

 ermen ! What a theme for the instructions to be given to the Ameri- 

 can minister at London, upon this emergency ! 



But the President of the United States and the Secretary of State 

 of that day, were no converts to the doctrine of Mr. Russell : nor 

 believers in the worthlessness of the fishing liberties. The minister 



