20 CASE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



offered to be silent with regard to both. To the stipulation now pro- 

 posed, or to any other, abandoning, or implying the abandonment of 

 any right in the fisheries claimed by the United States, they can not 

 subscribe. As a stipulation merely that the parties will hereafter 

 negotiate concerning the subjects in question, it appears also un- 

 necessary. Yet to an engagement, couched in general terms, so as to 

 embrace all the subjects of difference not yet adjusted, or so expressed 

 as to imply in no manner whatever an abandonment of any right 

 claimed by the United States, the undersigned are ready to agree.<^ 



In answer to this note from the American Plenipotentiaries the 

 British Plenipotentiaries withdrew their proposals relative to the 

 fisheries and offered to omit the boundary article altogether, reverting 

 to their position announced at the outset of the negotiations, as 

 appears from the following extract from their note of December 22nd : 



So far as regards the substitution proposed by the undersigned for 

 the last clause of the 8th article, as it was offered solely with the hope 

 of attaining the object of the amendment tendered by the American 

 plenipotentiaries at the conference of the 1st instant, no difficulty will 

 be made in withdrawing it. 



The undersigned, returning to the declaration made by them at the 

 conference of the 8th of August, that the privileges of fishing within 

 the limits of the British sovereignty, and of using the British terri- 

 tories for purposes connected with the fisheries, were what Great 

 Britain did not intend to grant without equivalent, are not desirous 

 of introducing any article upon the subject. 



With a view of removing what they consider as the only objection 

 to the immediate conclusion of the treaty, the undersigned agree to 

 adopt the proposal made by the American plenipotentiaries at the 

 conference of the 1st instant, and repeated in their last note, of 

 omitting the 8th article altogether.^ 



At the final conference held December 23rd the American Pleni- 

 potentiaries intimated their readiness to accede to the propositions 

 contained in the note of the British Plenipotentiaries of the 22nd 

 instant, namely, that no mention be made in the treaty of either the 

 fisheries or the Mississippi.^ 



This completed the negotiations, and the treaty which was signed 

 on the following day contains no reference either to the use of the 

 inshore fisheries by the United States, or to the navigation of the 

 Mississippi by British subjects. 



The position maintained by the American Plenipotentiaries on 

 this feature of the negotiations is set forth in their official report of 

 the negotiations to their Government, dated December 25, 1814, as 

 follows : 



» Appendix, p. 255. * Appendix, p. 256. 



