200 



statesmen of this Union, never to permit or abei the extinguish- 

 ment of any of our hberties, by abandonment, or surrender^ which 

 would be tacit renunciation. It was no purpose of mine to say that 

 our hberties could not be so extinguished. On the contrary, it was 

 precisely because after the notification of the British plenipoten- 

 tiaries on the 9th of August, 1814, our fishing liberties would have 

 been tacitly renounced, had we quietly acquiesced in it, that I deem- 

 ed the counter notification in the note of 10th November, or a new 

 stipulation in the treaty indispensable to save those liberties from 

 extinction. It was precisely because Mr. Russell had not only 

 been prepared to surrender them, but so eager to prove them al- 

 ready extinct, that I thought it necessary to give this warning to the 

 statesmen of my country, never hereafter to follow his example. 

 It was that counter notification, which saved our liberties (and our 

 rights too) in the fisheries. Had the negotiation with Great Bri- 

 tain since the peace, been for the repurchase of liberties acknow- 

 ledged by ourselves to be extinct, a very different equivalent must 

 have been given for them, from the naked right of navigating the Mis- 

 sissippi. The liberties of this Union will never be capable of being 

 extinguished otherwise than by express renunciation, so long as the 

 puWic servants to whom the defence and protection of them may 

 be committed, are duly determined never to surrender them by im- 

 plication. The incapacity of surrender is not in the liberty itself, 

 but in the soul of its defenders. 



As to the right of the British to the navigation of the Mississippi, 

 they have not only renounced it, by their concurrence with Mr. 

 Russell that the treaty of 1783 was abrogated by the war, but by- 

 stipulating anew boundary line, which cuts them off from all claim 

 to territory upon the river, without reserving the right to its navi- 

 gation. They have abandoned both the grounds of their claim to 

 it — territorial contiguity and treaty stipulation ; and an effectual 

 guard against it, more effectual indeed than any renunciation, is that 

 while they have no territory upon its borders, they never can have 

 any interest in reviving it. Their very advancing any claim to it 

 at Ghent, was an inconsistency with their doctrine that the treaty of 

 1783 was abrogated by the war, and as they really had no interest 

 worth a straw in the claim, they finally abandoned it, to redeem 

 their consistency. They, like Mr. Russell, were willing enough to 

 adopt one principle tor operation upon their own claims and its op- 

 posite principle, to affect the claims of their adversary ; but as the 

 object of their claim was of no real value, they finally preferred to 

 abandon their claim, rather than formally to renounce their doc- 

 trine. 



But there is one object which to Mr. Russell, as a member of 

 Congress, seems to present matter for very serious consideration. 

 If the navigation downwards of the Mississippi, by British subjects,- 

 with merchandise on which the duties have been paid, and subject 

 to all the custom-house regulations, is a power of such tremendoys 

 consequence to the Union, and especially to the unofi'ending inhar 



