50 CASE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



The renewal of the orders under which these vessels were seized 

 does not appear to have been made the subject of official corre- 

 spondence between the two Governments, but it is reported by Mr. 

 Bagot in his despatch of April 7, 1818, to Lord Castlereagh that prior 

 to the renewal of such orders he communicated to Mr. Adams, then 

 Secretary of State, " the orders which Sir David Milne proposed to 

 give to the shij^s under his command, in regard to the American 

 vessels found fishing upon our coast during the present season," and 

 he then proceeds to state " some part of the conversation which then 

 passed " between him and Mr. Adams, which, he adds, " was not a 

 little remarkable." This conversation as reported by Mr. Bagot with 

 his comments thereon is as follows: 



I met Mr. Adams accidentally on the street, and when I told him 

 of the letter which I had received from Sir David Milne, he showed 

 some surprise, but certainly no irritation. In the course, however, 

 of our conversation, which lasted about ten minutes, he said, not 

 with a tone of anger, but with the ordinary tone of earnestness with 

 which he usually speaks upon business, that, after all, " he believed 

 that they should have to fight about it, and that his opinion was, that 

 they ought to do so." 



I deprecated in some common-place phrase a resort to such an 

 extremity, when he proceeded to say that, " holding as he did the 

 right of participation in the United States to be unequivocal, unde- 

 niable, and absolute, it was a matter only to be settled by agreement 

 or by force; and, all arrangement by assignment of coast being out 

 of the question, he did not see distinctly what proposition of arrange- 

 ment could be made, which would promise a satisfactory result." 



He then said that " we could have no right to seize their ships ; that 

 all the lawyers in England with whom he had spoken on the subject 

 were of that opinion; that our own judge had last year released the 

 vessels which had been captured by the Dee^ and that, without an 

 Act of Parliament for the purj30se, they could not be taken; or, if 

 they were taken, the American Government would have a claim upon 

 Great Britain for full indemnity for them." 



The more I have reflected upon this conversation, the more ex- 

 traordinary I have thought it. Mr. Adams is, I presume, much too 

 cautious a man to have suffered himself, in his official situation, to be 

 betrayed by mere temper into the use of such expressions to me. 

 On the other hand, I equally presume that he cannot seriously believe 

 that the point itself is a ground of war for this country ; or, even if it 

 were, that this country could now be excited to a war with Great 

 Britain upon a point in which two States at the utmost have any im- 

 mediate interest whatever. The onl}^ explanation which I can con- 

 ceive of his conversation is either that, being himself of the State of 

 Massachusetts, the only State which is deeply interested in the ques- 

 tion, he is anxious to hold a very high tone upon the subject; or that 

 it is the policy of the Government not to let the matter be brought to 

 any arrangement but to reserve it as a grievance, to be used as it may 



