APPENDICES TO ORAL ARGUMENTS. 2245 



have left the negotiators without instructions, inasmuch as they 

 could have had no reason to suppose that the British Government 

 would for a moment listen to a separate peace, to the exclusion of 

 the Indians, who have acted with them as allies during the war. 



But upon the practicability of prosecuting the negotiation with 

 any utility, in the present imperfect state of the instructions, of 

 which the American negotiators avow themselves to be in possession, 

 the whole seems to turn upon the point you have so properly sug- 

 gested, viz.. whether the Commissioners will or will not take upon 

 themselves to sign a provisional agreement upon the points on which 

 they have no instructions. If they decline this, the British Govern- 

 ment sees no advantage in prosecuting the discussion further until 

 the American negotiators shall have received instructions upon these 

 points. If, on the contrary, upon a candid explanation of the 

 principles upon which Great Britain is prepared to treat upon these 

 subjects, they are willing, upon their own responsibility, to sign a 

 provisional agreement, the negotiation may proceed, and the treaty, 

 when concluded, may be sent, with the British ratification, to America 

 to be at once exchanged, if the American Government shall think 

 fit to confirm the act of their Commissioners. The British Govern- 

 ment cannot better evince their cordial desire for peace than by plac- 

 ing the negotiation upon this issue. You will, with this view, again 

 call the attention of the American Commissioners to the Indian ques- 

 tion, and. as connected with it, the question of boundary. 



I am desirous of particularly directing your attention to these 

 points, as the others suggested on either side for deliberation, if 

 you have rightly interpreted the meaning of the American Com- 

 missioners as to the fisheries, do not appear necessarily calculated 

 to create an insurmountable obstacle to the immediate restoration 

 of peace. In illustration of this, you may remark that, upon the 

 first of the British points, we are not disposed to insist upon any 

 express stipulation and are willing to leave the questions therein 

 involved to rest, as heretofore, upon the principles of general law. 



We see as little necessity for any stipulation upon the first of the 

 American points. Whatever difference may have existed upon the 

 retaliatory measures to which the British Government was obliged 

 to have recourse in the late war against France, we are not aware of 

 any difference that exists upon the ordinary law of blockade, or any 

 other branch of belligerent or neutral rights. If the American Com- 

 missioners shall bring forward anything specific on this or any other 

 subject, it will be the duty of the British Government to consider it; 

 but there seems no adequate motive on either side for encouraging 

 abstract discussions of this nature, which, if gone into, all must be 

 gone into generally, and not partially, with a view of arriving at 

 express stipulations upon the points of sovereignty and impress- 

 ment, as well as upon the points of blockade, &c. 



W T ith respect to the second of the American points, you cannot 

 be too peremptory in discouraging, at the outset, the smallest ex- 

 pectations of any restitution of captures made under the Orders 

 in Council. There may be claims on both sides of an ordinary de- 

 scription, involving no principles to which His Majesty's Govern- 

 ment would have to object, and upon which mutual satisfaction 

 might be given; but these cases are probably of a very limited ex- 



