[DUPLICATE.] 81 



If the article which we (128) offered was merely intended to rescue 

 the third and eighth articles ot^the treaty of 1783, from the opera- 

 tion of the present war, and to continue them precisely as they 

 were immediately prior to this war, the third article beina; then in 

 full force, and the eighth article being no longer (129) operative, we 

 should have attempted to exchange, like General Drummond, the 

 dead for the living. It is not surprising, therefore, that the British 

 government, in suspecting such an intention, (130) should have re- 

 jected our proposition. 



1 was opposed, however, to making the proposition, not only be- 

 cause I was convinced that it wjcs (131) made with no such inten- 

 tion, but because I believed it would give to Great Britain the free 

 navigation of the Mississippi, under circumstances, and evidently 

 for an object, which would place it on very distinct grounds from 

 those on which it was placed by the treaty of 1783, 



The whole of the Mississippi being now exclusively within the 

 acknowledged jurisdiction of the United States, a simple renewal 

 of the British right to navigate it would place that right beyond the 

 reach of the war; and every other previous circumstance which 

 might have impaired or terminated it, and the (132) right to grant, 

 on our part, being now complete, the right to enjoy, (133) on the parr, 

 of Great Britain, must be complete also. It would be absurd to sup= 

 pose that any thing impossible was intended, and that Great Britain 

 was to be allowed to navigate the Mississippi (13^) only as she 

 (135) would have navigated it immediately after the treaty of 1783, 

 as if her territories extended to it, and as if Spain was (l36) in the 

 entire possession of one of its banks, and of a considerable portion 

 of the other. The (137) recognition of the British right to navigate 

 the Mississippi, would be, (I38) under exist i7ig circn.msfatices, a new and 

 complete grant to her, measured by these circumstances, and, 

 thence, embracing not only the entire freedom of the whole extent 



of (139) the river and its tributary waters, but unrestrained accesS tO it 

 across our territories. If we did not intend (1*0) to offer this, we in- 

 tended to offer nothing which Great Britain could accept ; and what- 

 ever else (1*1) we might have intended to offer, if not at once rejected by her, 

 would at least have been, hereafter, the subject of new and endless con- 

 troversy. 



When, however, we connected the revival of the navigation of 

 the Mississippi with the revival of the (142) privilege of taking and 

 curing fish within the British jurisdiction, two things which never 

 before had any relation to each other, we evidently meant, if we 

 acted (143) with good faith, not only to concede, as well as to ob- 

 tain something, but also to be understood as conceding an equiva- 

 lent for what we obtained. 



In thus offering the navigation of the Mississippi, and the access 

 to it through our territories, as an equivalent for the fishing liberty, 

 we not only placed both on ground entirely different from that 

 (144) on which they respectively stood in the treaty of 1783, and 

 icted somewhat inconsistently with our own reasoning, relative to 



