147 



majority, in offering so extravagant an equivalent, for what they 

 knew, upon their own inquiries, to be of so little value. Knowin"-, 

 as I did, that the information was all misinformation ; that no in- 

 formation concerning the value of the privilege had been, or could 

 have been, obtained by the joint mission ; and that, excepting some 

 doubts as to its value, expressed, not by Mr. Russell, it had never 

 been even a subject of conversation in the mission — I turned to 

 the real letter from Paris, to see how the writer had expressed 

 himself there, and found he had written, " according to the best 

 information that / can obtain on the subject," 1 saw immediately 

 that all that tale about the obscurity and humidity of the atmos- 

 phere, in the high northern latidudes, to degrade the value of the 

 Labrador lishery, was not in the original even pretended to have 

 been information sought or obtained by the joint mission ; that the 

 discover]! which it discloses was not pretended to have been ever 

 made known to the mission ; that the fogs, so pernicious to the 

 curing of the fish, were in the original letter, if not merely the 

 vapours of Mr. Russell's imagination, at least no more than the re- 

 sult of the best intormation that he could obtain. And I instantly 

 saw, too, the motives for the substitution of the words we could in 

 in the duplicate, for the words / can, in the original. As the ori- 

 ginal had been written the bill of indictment which it virtually con- 

 tained against the majority of the mission, lett them at liberty to 

 say, in their defence, that if they had overrated the value of the.fish- 

 ing liberty, it had been at least an honest error. It left them at 

 liberty to inquire, why Mr. Russell, in their discussions upon the 

 fishery question, had not revealed to them this great discovery of 

 obscurity and humidity and incessant fogs, which "lessened so much 

 the value of the fishing liberty. The -we could of the duplicate 

 took from them all such means of defence. It represented them 

 as having wilfully sinned against their better knowledge ; as hav- 

 ing sought information of the value of the fishing liberty — as hav- 

 ing obtained proof of its worthlessness — and yet as having persisted 

 in offering for it an equivalent which was to let in British smugglers, 

 British emmissaries, and all the horrors of Indian warfare, upon 

 the unoffending inhabitants of the West. Was this one of those 

 corrections which Mr. Russell believed himself permitted to make, 

 which appeared to him proper, to exhibit his case most advantage- 

 ously before the tribunal of the public ? 



Proceeding in the comparison between the two papers, when I 

 came to that sublime panegyric upon the fishermen to atone for the 

 absolute surrender and eager sacrifice of their liberties ; to that 

 cheering cup of consolation doled out to them as a peace-offering 

 for the extinguishment, as far as Mr. Russell's labours could avail, 

 of their means of subsistence, " that the essential security and pros- 

 perity of the many, must be preferred to the convenience and mi- 

 nor interests of the ^ew ;" to that swelling peal of self-applsuse, 

 for early prepossessions silenced, and local predilections subdued ; 

 aH substituted in the duplicate, for a mere postscripted trust, in the 



