112 



been compelled to speak as in these remarks I hare done, of a per- 

 son di-iUiigui?hed b» the favour of his country, and with whom I 

 had be.^n associated in a service of high interest to this Cnion, has 

 been nOiong the most paintul incidents of my life. In the defence 

 of myself and my colleagues, against imputations so groundless ia 

 themselves, at tirst so secretly set forth and now so wantonly pro- 

 mulgated before the legislative assembly of the nation, it has been 

 impossible entirely to separate the language of self-vindication from 

 that of reproach. With 3Ir. Russell 1 can also rejoice that the 

 proposal odered on the 1st of December, 1814, was rejected by 

 the British government, not because 1 believe it now, more than I 

 did then, liable to any of the dangers and mischiefs so glaring ia 

 the vaticinations of 3ir. Russell, but because both the interests to 

 which it relates have since been adjusted in a manner still more 

 satisfactory to the United States. 1 rejoice, too, that this adjust- 

 ment has taken place before the publication of 3Ir, Russell's letter 

 could have any possible iufluence in defeating or retarding it. The 

 convention of 20th October, 1818, is the refutation of all the doc- 

 trines of Mr. Russell's letter, to which there can be no reply. It 

 has adjusted the tishins: interest upon the principle asserted l3y the 

 American mission at Ghent, but disclaimed by Mr. Russell. It has 

 given us the boundary of latitude 49, t>om the Lake of the Woods 

 westward, and it has proved the total indiflerence of the British 

 government to the right of navigating the Mississippi, by their 

 abandonment of their last claim to it, without asking an equivalent 

 for its renunciation. 



With regard to the magnitude of the fishing interest which was at 

 stake during the negotiation at Ghent, I believe the views disclosed 

 in Mr. Russell's letter as incorrect as the principles upon which he 

 would have surrendered it. The notification of exclusion was from 

 all fi^neries within exclusive British jurisdiction. I have shown 

 that, historically, Great Britain had asserted and maintained exclu- 

 sive proprietary jurisdiction over the whole. Had we tamely ac- 

 quiesced in her principle of forfeiture, without renunciation, we 

 should soon have found that her principle of exclusion embraced 

 the whole. That a citizen of Massachusetts, acquainted with its 

 colonial history, with the share that his countrymen had had in the 

 conquest of a great part of these fisheries, with the deep and 

 anxious interest in them taken by France, by Spain, by Great Bri- 

 tain, for centuries before the American revolution ; acquainted 

 with the negotiations of which they had been the knot, and the wars 

 of which they had been the prize, between the three most powerful 

 maritime nations of modern Europe : acquainted with the profound 

 sensibilitA' of the whole American Union, during the revolutionary 

 war, to this interest, and with the inflexible energies by which it 

 bad been secured at its close ; acquainted with the indissoluble 

 Imks of attachment between it and the navigation, the navy, the ma- 

 ritime defence, the national spirit and hardy enterprise of this great 

 republic ; that such a citizen, stimulated to the discharge of duty by 



