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the same interests, and in many respects the same identical points 

 and questions. The causes in which the present war orio-inated 

 and for which it was on our part waged, will scarcely form the mosf 

 insignificant item in the negotiation tor peace. It is not impress- 

 ment and unalienable allegiance, blockades and orders in council, 

 colonial trade and maritime rights, or belligerent and neutral colli- 

 sions of any kind that form the subjects of our discussion. It is the 

 boundary, the fisheries, and the Indian savages. 



" It is nothing extraordinary but a strong evidence of the real 

 character of the contest in which we are engaged, that the most 

 offensive and inadmissible of the British demands are pointed 

 against the State of Massachusetts. It is a part of her territory 

 of which they require the cession, and it is the fisheries of her 

 citizens which they declare themselves determined no longer to 

 allow. It is not the general right to the fisheries which they con- 

 test, but the liberty of fishing and of drying fish within their juris- 

 diction, stipulated in the 3d article of the peace of 1783. For my 

 own part, I consider the whole article as containing parts of the 

 general acknowledgment of our Independence, and therefore, as 

 needing no renewal by any future treaty. But as the subject will 

 certainly come under the consideration of the goverament of the 

 United States, they will have time to give instructions founded upon 

 their view of it, before any peace can be concluded. There is no 

 doubt, whenever the negotiation is resumed, that this point will be- 

 come again a subject for discussion. If there is among your papers 

 relating to the negotiations of peace in 1782 and 1783, any infor- 

 mation tending to elucidate the third article of those treaties which 

 you can communicate to me, it may perhaps serve a valuable pur- 

 pose to the public. And as this letter contains more than I should 

 at this moment think myself warranted to communicate even to 

 you, but for the particular motive which occasions it, I must re- 

 quest of you to consider it as entirely confidential. 



" Ghent, 26th December, 1814. 

 *' My dear sir : I transmited by Mr. Hughes a duplicate of my last 

 letter to you, dated 27th October, which 1 siill entreat you to an" 

 swer, if lam destined to a longer continuance in Europe^ and upon 

 which 1 ask all the advice and information which it may be in your 

 power to bestow. It relates principally to the subject of the great- 

 est difficulty we have had in the negotiation, and that, which of all 

 others, is left in the state the most unsatisfactory to us and particu- 

 larly to me. It has been now for a full month ascertained, that 

 unless new pretensions on the part of Great Britain were advanced, 

 a treaty of peace would be signed ; but it was not until last Thurs- 

 day that I ceased to doubt whether it would receive my signature. 

 The British plenipotentiaries had declared to us at the outset of 

 the negotiation, that it was not the intention of the British govern- 

 ment to grant to the people of the United States in future the li- 

 berties of fishing, and drying, and curing fish wiihin the fxchisiv*- 



