135 



vvhich Mr. Adams contends, is left on a very equivocal foundation, 

 Mr. Adams insinuates that the convention of 1818 contirms hi3 

 doctrine, and gives a tinal stroke to mine. That convention doea 

 liot contain the shghtest allusion to the doctnne of Mr. Adams, nor 

 even to the treaty of 1783, but settles the differences which had 

 arisen on the subject by a grant entirely new. 



By the way, if an express renunciation was necessary, on our 

 part, to surrender the tishing privilege, the implicit renunciation 

 which Mr. Adams says was made by the British, cannot be suffi- 

 cient to surrender their right to navigate the Mississippi — accord- 

 ing to Mr. Adams, therefore, that right is unimpaired. 



I certainly was not willing to renounce or to surrender the fishing 

 privilege to force or conquest, but I was willing to adopt a doctrine 

 which I believed, and still believe, to be the true one ; and which, 

 if it deprived us of the benetit of the tishing privilege, released us 

 at the same time from the evils of the British right to navigate 

 the Mississippi, because I believed those evils outweighed that be- 

 nefit. I have seen no cause since to change this opinion. 



All that Mr. Adams says, in his remarks concerning the fishing 

 privilege, is " that we had renounced certain parts, which without 

 being of muck use to ourselves, had been found very inconvenient 

 to the British ; and that my views with regard to the magnitude of 

 the fishing interest, he believes to be as incorrect as my principles 

 on which 1 would have surrendered it. If I erred in my estimate 

 of the fishing privilege, there is nothing in these remarks of Mr. 

 Adams to demonstrate my error. I acted on the best information 

 which I had at the time. And, if I erred, my error could not de- 

 serve reproach. I believe, however, that the views, disclosed in 

 my letter, did not|underrate or depreciate that privilege. The most 

 authentic information which I have until now been able to obtain 

 on the subject, justifies the opinion which I then entertained in re- 

 lation to it. I am informed by respectable citizens well acquainted 

 with the business, that few or no fish are now dried or cured within 

 the British jurisdiction, and that most, if not all that are taken 

 there, are taken by the few fishermen who have not sufficient capi- 

 tal to procure vessels of adequate size and strength to fish on the 

 grand banks or in the open sea ; and that even those few fishermen 

 are annually decreasing in number. 



With regard to the British right to navigate the Mississippi, Mr. 

 Adams says that it was a niere phantom — that they had enjoyed it for 

 SOyears without Msm^ it"-thatin all human probabihty it never would 

 have been of more benejicial use to the British nation than would 

 be to the people of the United States the right of navigating the 

 Bridgewater Canal or the Danube ; and that, in surrendering it, 

 the British would have surrendered absolutely nothing. Although 

 all this was not said at Ghent to the same extent, yet Mr. Adams cer- 

 tainly did express there his great contempt of the British right to 

 reach and navigate thai river. 1 have good reason to beheve, how^ 

 ti-xdv, that there was not another member of the mission who en- 



