[duplicate.] 69 



to the rank of a sovereign right, and thereby to have assumed the 

 unnecessary and inconvenient obligation of considering such a lib- 

 erty to be an indispensable condition of our national existence, and 

 thus rendering that existence as precarious as the liberty itself. 

 They could not have considered a privilege which they ex- 

 pressly made to depend, to a very considerable extent, for its con- 

 tinuance, (32) on mere events and private interests, as partaking of 

 the character, and entitled to the duration, of the inherent proper- 

 ties of sovereignty. The settlement of the shores might, at any 

 time, have been effected by the policy of the British government, 

 and would have made the assent of British subjects under the influ- 

 ence of that policy, necessary to the continuance of a very consi 

 derable portion of that (33) privilege. They could not have meant 

 thus to place within the control of a foreign (3*) power and its 

 subjects, an {^5) integral part, as we now affect to consider this pri- 

 vilege, of our national rights. 



It is from this view of the subject that I have been constrained 

 to believe that there was nothing in the treaty of 1783, which could 

 essentially distinguish it from ordinary treaties, or rescue it, on 

 account of any peculiarity of character, from the jura belli, or from 

 the operation of those events on which the (36) continuance or ter- 

 mination of such treaties depends. 



I was, in like manner, compelled to believe, if any such peculi- 

 arity belonged to those provisions in that treaty, which had an im- 

 mediate connection with our independence, that it did not necessa- 

 rily affect the nature of the whole treaty, (37) nor attach to a privi- 

 lege which had no analogy to such provisions, nor any relation to 

 that independence. 



I know not, indeed, any treaty, nor any article of a treaty, what- 

 ever may have been the subject to which it related, or the terms 

 in which it was expressed, that has survived a war between the 

 parties, without being specially renewed, by reference or recital, 

 in the succeeding treaty of peace. I cannot, indeed, (38) conceive the 

 possibility of such a treaty, or of such an article ; for, however 

 clear and strong the stipulations for perpetuity might be, these 

 stipulations themselves would follow the fate of ordinary unexecut- 

 ed engagements, and require, after a war, the declared assent of 

 the parties for their revival. 



We appear, in fact, not to have an unqualified confidence in our 

 construction of the treaty of 1783, or to have been willing to rest 

 exclusively on its peculiar character our title to any of the rights 

 mentioned in it ; and much less our title to the fishing (39) privilege 

 in question. 



If hostilities could not affect that treaty, (40) nor abrogate its pro- 

 visions, why did we permit the boundaries assigned by it, to be 

 brought into discussion, or stipulate for a (41) restoration of all places 

 taken from us during the present war ? If such (42) a restitution was 

 secured by the mere operation of the treaty of 1783, why did we 

 discover any sohcitudefor the status ante bellvm. and not rejjfst the 

 principle of uti possidetis on that groun^. 



