176 



cultivate cotton or sugar. To be cut ofT even from that portion of 

 it which was within the exclusive British jurisdiction in the strict- 

 est sense, within the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the coast of La- 

 brador, would have been like an interdict upon the people of 

 Georgia or Louisiana to cultivate with cotton or sugar three-fourtha 

 of the lands of those respective States. The fisheries of Massa- 

 chusetts are her cotton plants and her sugar canes. She is not blest 

 with the genial skies, nor gifted with the prolific soil, of southern 

 climes ; but that which nature has denied to her shores, she has 

 bestowed upon her neighbouring seas, and to them she is indebted 

 for copious sources of nourishment and subsistence, if not of opu- 

 lence and splendour, to thousands of her sons. 



Of the value of these fisheries, none but general information was 

 possessed by the American negotiators at Ghent. Their instruc- 

 tions were, not to inquire into their value, but not to surrender any 

 part of them. After the peace was made, while Mr. Russell was 

 intent upon his discovery that they were worthless by reason of 

 incessant fogs and humidities of atmosphere, and straining his dia- 

 lectic powers and his diplomatic erudition, to prove that the right 

 to them was irretrievably lost, I was impelled by my sense of 

 duty to seek more particular information of the value both of that 

 fishery, generally, and of that portion of it, which, by the most re- 

 stricted construction of the notification which we had received, 

 would be denied us if that notification should be carried into effect. 

 I obtained itfrom various sources ; but principally from one of the 

 most distinguished merchants and statesmen of this Union : and as 

 it concerns an object of great national interest, I shall publish it, 

 with some additional observations of my own. It will have the ef- 

 fect of sunshine upon all Mr. Russell's fogs. 



Immensely valuable as it will prove these fisheries to be, yet if the 

 question involved in the article first proposed by Mr. Gallatin had 

 been such, that while securing to the people of New England the 

 continued enjoyment of them, it would in any the slightest degree 

 have impaired the enjoyment, by the people of the Western 

 Country, of their right to navigate the Mississippi, the objection to 

 it would have been serious and great. Could it have aiTected ma- 

 terially their enjoyment of that right, the objection would have 

 been insuperable, and Mr. Gallatin never would have thought of 

 making the proposal. But no such consequence cuuld flow from it. 

 The people of the West are left by it in the lull enjoyment of all 

 their rights. Nothing was taken from them. But British subjects 

 from Canada would have been entitled to travel by land or water to 

 the river, and to descend in boats to its mouth. They now enjoy 

 the right as much as they would have enjoyed it if the article had 

 been proposed and accepted. The only difierence is, that they now 

 enjoy it, as not prohibited by law, while by the proposed article it 

 \vould liave been secured to them by treaty. 



The objection to Mr. Gallatin's proposed article, therefore, was 

 ^n rb>«c.tion to secnring to New England the continued enjoymcu^ 



