282 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



own sovereign : by the revolution and the treaty of peace, it became 

 a foreign, but still remained a special, jurisdiction. By the very same 

 instrument in which we thus acknowledged it as a foreign jurisdic- 

 tion, we reserved to ourselves with the full assent of its sovereign, and 

 without any limitation of time or of events the franchise which we 

 had always enjoyed while the jurisdiction had been our own. 



It was termed a liberty because it was a freedom to be enjoyed 

 within a special jurisdiction; the fisheries on the Banks were termed 

 rights because they were to be enjoyed on the ocean, the common 

 jurisdiction of all nations; but there was nothing in the terms them- 

 selves and nothing in the article or in the treaty implying an inten- 

 tion or expectation of either of the contracting parties, that one, more 

 than the other, should be liable to forfeiture by a subsequent war. 

 On the maturest deliberation, I still hold this argument to be sound, 

 and it is to my mind the only one by which our claim to the fisheries 

 within British jurisdiction can be maintained. But after the decla- 

 ration made by the British government, it was not to be expected 

 that they would be converted to this opinion without much discussion, 

 which was forbidden to us, and the result of this must have been very 

 doubtful upon minds at all times inclined, and at this time most 

 peculiarly prone, rather to lean upon power than to listen to reason. 

 We stated the general principle in one of our notes to the British 

 plenipotentiaries, as the ground upon which our government deemed 

 no new stipulation necessary to secure the enjoyment of all our rights 

 and liberties in the fisheries. They did not answer that part of our 

 note; but when they came to ask a stipulation for the right of Brit- 

 ish subjects to navigate the Mississippi, we objected, that by our con- 

 struction of the treaty of 1783, it was unnecessary. If we admitted 

 their construction of that treaty, so as to give them a new right to 

 the navigation, they must give us an equivalent for it. We offered 

 an article recognizing the continuance of the rights on both sides; 

 this offer met, however, with very great opposition among ourselves 

 for there were two of us against making it ; and who thought the 

 navigation of the Mississippi incomparably more valuable than the 

 contested part of the fisheries. Not so did the British government 

 think; for they, instead of accepting it, offered us an article 

 169 stipulating to negotiate hereafter for an equivalent to be given 

 by Great Britain for the right of navigating the Mississippi. 

 and by the United States for the liberties of the fisheries within Brit- 

 ish jurisdiction. This was merely to obtain from us the formal ad- 

 mission that both the rights were abrogated by the war. To that 

 admission I was determined not to subscribe. The article was with- 

 drawn last Thursday by the British plenipotentiaries, who accepted 

 our proposal to say nothing in the treaty about either, and to omit 

 the article by which they had agreed that our boundary west from 

 the Lake of the Woods should be the 49th parallel of north latitude. 

 They at the same time referred again to their original declaration, 

 that the fisheries within British jurisdiction would not hereafter be 

 granted without an equivalent. It is evident that it must be the sub- 

 ject of a future negotiation. The only thing possible to be done now, 

 was to preserve our whole claim unimpaired, and with that I 

 consented to sign the treaty. 



