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even than self-contradiction. The whole letter is a laborious tis- 

 sue of misrepresentation of every part of its subject ; of the con- 

 duct and sentiments of his colleagues who constituted the majority 

 of the mission ; and of his own conduct and sentiments in opposi- 

 tion to them. It substantially charges them with deliberate and 

 wanton violation, in the face of his solemn warning, of the positive 

 and unequivocal instructions of their government, for the sake of 

 sacrificing the interest, the peace, the comfortable existence of the 

 whole western country, to the doubtful accommodation of a few 

 eastern fishermen, and in support of a claim to which they had not 

 the shadow of a right. 



I say it is a tissue of misrepresentations — of the subject, of the 

 conduct and sentiments of his colleagues, and of his own conduct 

 in opposition to them. 



1. Of the subject. Mr. Russell represents the offer of an article, 

 granting to the British the right of navigating the Mississippi, as aa 

 equivalent for the grant of a fishing privilege in British jurisdic- 

 tion, as if it had been a separate and insulated proposal of new 

 grants, in a distinct article, without reference to the state of the ne- 

 gotiation at the time when it was made, to the occasion upon which 

 it was made, and to the considerations by which it was induced. 



Mr. Russell repre - -nts the article as if offered under circum- 

 stances, when it was, by both parties, acknowledged that the British 

 had no claim to territory, to the Mississippi. This is a direct and 

 positive perversion of the whole statement of the subject. 



Mr. Russell represents the offer of a right to navigate the Mis- 

 sissippi, and of access to it from the British territories as general 

 and unqualified ; as giving access to British traders and British em- 

 issaries to every part of the western country, and to intercourse 

 with all our Indians. The proposal was, of a limited access from 

 a single spot of the British territory, to the river, for the purpose 

 of navigating the river with merchandise, upon which the duties 

 of import should have been first paid. 



In consequence of these misrepresentations, Mr. Russell brings ia 

 British smugglers, British emissaries, and all the horrors of Indian 

 warfare, upon the western country, as necessary inferences from a 

 proposal, not that which was made, but that into which it is dis- 

 torted by his misrepresentations. 



2. Of the conduct and sentiments of his colleagues. 

 Mr. Russell represents his colleagues as having deliberately, 

 and against his declared opinion, violated both the letter and the 

 spirit of their most exphcit and implicit, express and unequivocal, 

 instructions from their own government. He charges them, alsOj 

 with having violated their own construction of their instructions. 



It is true that, in another reading of the same letter, purporting 

 to have been written on the same day, he acquits them entirely of 

 all violation of their instructions, and declares he had always been 

 of that opinion. 



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