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ble every hour to be called to a share in that negotiation, and to 

 the duty of maintaining against British negotiators our lishing liber- 

 tiesj deliberately sits down and writes to his government a long 

 and learned diplomatic discourse to prove, that the fishing liberties 

 were irretrievably lost ; that there was not a shadow of right to 

 them remaining ; that the principle upon which he and his col- 

 leagues had staked them at Ghent, was the dream of a visionary ; 

 that our only title to them was a grant, in the treaty of 1783 ; that 

 the treaty of 1783 was a dead letter, and that the only possible ex- 

 pedient for us to recover them, was by offering for them an equi- 

 valent, "fair in its comparative value, and just in its relative ef- 

 fects ;" and, as the profoundest of all his discoveries, reveals to 

 them that this equivalent must be taken " wherever it might be 

 found." 



This letter, Mr. Russell writes, not in cypher ; commits it to 

 the ocean, before hostilities have ceased ; and exposes it in various 

 ways to be intercepted by the enemy. It reaches, however, ite 

 destination, after the ratification of the peace, and just about the 

 time when British cruisers, stationed on the fishing grounds, warn 

 all American fishing vessels not to approach within sixty mihs of 

 the shores. Such is the practical exposition given by the British 

 government of their meaning in the indefinite notification that they 

 intended to exclude us from fishing -within the limits of British so- 

 vereignty : and that exposition was supported by all the historical 

 public law applicable to the case, and by the most eminent writers 

 upon the law of nations. The complaints of the American fisher- 

 men, thus interrupted in their honest industry, and interdicted 

 from the exercise of it, and the argument of Mr. Russell to de- 

 monstrate the abrogation of the treaty of 1783 by war, and the 

 consequent discontinuance of the fishing p*'m7e^e, (as he terms it) 

 must have been received about the same time, by the Secretary of 

 State. If the argument had been as successful, as it had been la- 

 boriously wrought, what a happy answer it would have supplied 

 for Mr. Monroe to the complaints of the fishermen ! What a theme 

 for the instructions to be given to the American minister at Lon- 

 don, upon this emergency ! 



But the President of the United States and the Secretary of 

 State of that day, were no converts to the doctrine of Mr. Russell ; 

 nor believers in the worthlessness of the fishing liberties. The 

 minister at London was instructed to remonstrate against the inter- 

 ruption of the fishermen, and to maintain the rights of the nation. 

 A correspondence with the British government ensued, in which 

 the question as to the abrogation of the treaty of 1783 was tho- 

 roughly discussed. The orders to the British cruisers were partly 

 disavowed, and partly countermanded. The negotiation was con- 

 tinued until that of the convention of 1818 commenced, and merg- 

 ed in it. The British government never formally renounced their 

 and Mr. Russell's doctrine, that the war of 1812 had abrogated the 

 treaty of 1783. As little did the government of the United Stated 



