177 



of the fisheries, because the price of its purchase would be to per- 

 mit British subjects to travel a highway in the Western Country, 

 It was impossible to make of it any thing more ; and deeply con- 

 cerned as I felt for the fate of the fisheries, 1 greatly regretted 

 that the objection was made to it. Not that I expected It would be 

 accepted by the British plenipotentiaries. I too well knew the 

 value which they set upon the fisheries, and the worthlessness al 

 which they must estimate the naked right to them of navigating the 

 Mississippi, to consider it as probable that they would accept the 

 proposal. But our duty as ministers of the Union, charged with 

 the defence of all its rights and liberties staked upon the conflict, 

 and specially instructed not to surrender the fisheries, was to use 

 ^verif fair exertion to preserve them. And Mr. Gallatin's proposal 

 was one of the only two possible modes of efi'ecting it. 



Nevertheless, as a strong and earnest opposition to proposing the 

 article was made, avowedly founded upon a su[»posed interest 

 merely sectional ; after a discussion continued through six succes- 

 sive days, at the last of which only I had taken part, and before the 

 vote was taken, I did, on the 4th of November, declare myself pre- 

 pared either to propose Mr. Gallatin's article, or to take the ground 

 that all the rights and liberties in the fisheries were recognised as 

 a part of our national independence, that they could not be abro- 

 gated by the' war, and needed no stipulation for their renewal — to 

 assert this principle in the note to be sent to the British plenipo- 

 tentiaries, with the project of the treaty, and to omit the article 

 altogether. 



Mr. Russell, in the acuteness of his perceptions, discovers an in- 

 consistency between these two opinions. In his letter from Paris^ 

 he charged it as an inconsistency upon t!ic majority of the mission. 

 In the Boston Statesman he returns to it as an inconsistency ofmine. 

 According to his doctrine, the assertion of aright or liberty, is iyicon- 

 sistent with the offer of a stipulation for its recognition. The first 

 article of the preliminaries, of November, 1782, was, according to 

 this doctrine, incoiisistent with the Declaration of Independence. 

 Why stipulate for a right, which you hold by virtue of your own 

 declaration ? I cannot waste words in refuting such positions as 

 these. So of the pretended inconsistmcy of stipulating for the li- 

 leriy, leaving the right to the fisheries to rest upon the recognition 

 in the treaty of 1783. The stipulation offered was co-extensive 

 with the portion of right contested by the adverse party. There 

 was no motive tor asking a stipulation for that which they did not 

 question. If the British plenipotentiaries had not notified to us 

 that they considered our privileges of jishing -within the limits of 

 British sovereignty, as forfeited by the war, I never should have 

 thought of asking a new stipulation to secure them. If their doc- 

 trine and Mr. Russell's was right, that the whole treaty of 1783 wa«i 

 abrogated by the war, and that our only title to the fishing liber- 

 ties was a grant of his Britannic majesty's, in that treaty, which 

 hy the mere existence of war, was totally extinguished, they were 



