146 



words, the date, and the whole letter, are in the hand-writing of 

 Mr. Russell. 



On reading the letter through, I found it had been composed 

 with aview to be received and understood as if all written at Paris, 

 in February, 1815. Yet I was confident it had not all been so 

 written. I was particularly struck with the following passages. 

 *' I will frankly avow, however, that my impressions were, and still 

 '* are, that Great Britain, calculating on the success of the povver- 

 *' ful expedition which she has sent against New-Orleans, confi- 

 " dently expected that she would have become the mistress of 

 «' Louisiana, and all its waters ; and that she did not, in this event, 

 *' intend to abandon her conquest under the terms of the treaty of 

 « Ghent." 



" If she be disappointed in her views on Louisiana, and I trust 

 ** in God and the valour of the West that s/?e will be, I ^hall not be 

 ** surprised, if, hereafter, she grants us the fishing privilege, which 

 " costs her absolutely nothing, without any extravagant equivalent 

 *' whatever." 



" At any rate, we are still at liberty to negotiate for that privilege, 

 ^' and to otTer for it an equivnlent, fair in its comparative value, and 

 *' just in its relative effects." 



" I trust in God she will be" — in a letter dated Paris, 1 1 Febru- 

 ary, 1822 — signed Jonathan Kussell — addressed to the Hon. James 

 Monroe, Secretary of State — and delivered by Mr. Russell to be 

 communicated to the House of Representatives, in answer to a call 

 suggested by himself for a letter written by him in 1815! And 

 Mr. Russell charges me with disingcnuousness, for communicating 

 this paper to the House ! And Mr. Russell talks of respect for the 

 Representatives of the people of the United States ! I am in the 

 judgment of my country, upon this state of facts But as for Mr. 

 Russell, when he wrote that — " I trust in God, she will be" — and 

 came to the name of God — did not the pen drop from his hand ? 



I took the letter to the President, and expressing to him my sus- 

 picion, that the above passage particularly had never been written 

 at Paris, requested him to cause search to be made among his pri- 

 vate papers for the original letter, if there ever had been one. 

 The search was accordingly made, and the letter was found. On 

 comparing them together, I immediately perceived that the original 

 was marked prroaie ; which the duplicate was not. I turned im- 

 mediately to the prophesies of the duplicate : in the original they 

 were not, I looked to the passage in the duplicate, which repre- 

 sents the fishing privilege, notonly as utterly insignificant, and trifling 

 in value, but as having been proved to be so by the best informa- 

 tion " we (the plenipotentiaries at Ghent) could obtain on the sub- 

 ject." There was a whole system of misrepresentation in these 

 words we could obtain : for they represented the incorrect estimate 

 of the value of the fishing privilege which they introduced, as the 

 result of information obtaiaed by the whole mission at Ghent, as 

 having been there discussed, and as aggravating the wrong of tha 



1 



