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renounce the doctrine, that all their rights and Hberties, recognised 

 by the treaty of 1783, were in full force as if the war of 1812 had 

 never occurred. The conflict of opinion was adjusted by a new 

 article, as little liable to be abrogated by a future war, as the treaty 

 of Independence. By this article, we have expressly renounced 

 a small portion of the liberties within the exclusive and limited 

 territorial jurisdiction of part of the British provinces, and have 

 received in equivalent an enlargement of those liberties on the 

 coast and shores of Newfoundland. The substance of the contest 

 has been conceded to us ; and each party has adhered to its doc- 

 trine. Now, if Mr. Russell had been charged with this negotiation 

 on the part of the United States, as, at the time when he wrote 

 his letter of 11 th February, 1815, there was a probability that he 

 might be, what would have been his situation, and how would this 

 great interest of his country have stood, if when first ordered to 

 remonstrate against the interruption of the American fishermen by 

 British cruisers in 1815, the British government had answered 

 him by a copy of his own letter, written but six months before at 

 Paris ? To his own situation, perhaps, his memory may furnish 

 him a parallel, from the feelings with which on the 29th of April 

 last, he learnt that the original of his letter had been found. But 

 for the interest of his country^ what had his letter left him the power 

 to say to the British government, in the case supposed ? For the 

 maintenance of the liberties of his country, he had disabled his own 

 pen, and sealed his own lips. He had come forth as the chamjuon 

 of the cause of their adversary. The fisheries on the banks of 

 Newfoundland, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the coast of 

 Labrador, would have been lost to this Union ; lost, by the pre- 

 varications (to use no harsher term) of a native of Massachu- 

 setts. Is this, the man who charges me with infirmities of 

 temper, which might have taken a course disastrous to my country? 



II. Right of the People of the United States to the Fishing Liberties— 

 Effect of War upon Treaties, and Treaty Stipulations — Peculiar 

 character of the Treaty of 1783. 



When at the negotiations of Ghent, under an express instruction 

 from the government of the United States, sooner to break oflf the 

 negotiation than to surrender the fisheries ; after a notification from 

 the British plenipotentiaries that their government *' did not intend 

 *' to grant to the United States, gratuitously, the privileges formerly 

 "granted to them by treaty, oi fishing within the limits of the Bri- 

 ** tish sovereignty, and of using the shores of the British territories, 

 " for purposes connected with the fisheries" — I suggested to my 

 colleagues, as an answer to be given to that notification, that all the 

 righu and libertiesy in the fisheries, having been recognised by 



