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however lofty, is so inconsistent with the circumstances of the caac.^ 

 and with any sober construction which can be given to that treaty, 

 that he desires to be excused from seriously examining its vaHdity. 

 From this contemptuous reference to a position to which he had 

 subscribed without hinting an objection, and which he cannot an- 

 swer, would not one imagine that the treaty of 1783 was a capitula- 

 tion of vanquished subjects at the feet of a victorious and magnani- 

 mous master ? Mr. Russell's spirit of independence, like his 

 patriotism, is bold and intrepid in generalities, pliant and submissive 

 in particulars. He gravely tells you, that until the Revolution, the 

 fishing liberties of the colonies were held at the bare pleasure of 

 the crown. He is so anxious for the repurchase of our forfeited 

 fishing liberties, that he is willing to give for them an equivalent 

 zaherevcr it may be found ; provided always, that it shall not be the 

 continuance of a harmless right to travel upon a Western highway. 

 He disclaims all pretension to a liberty of his country stipulated in 

 a treaty, unless as a gracious temporary donation from the bounty of 

 his Britannic majesty, which, at the first blast of war, the monarch 

 had rightfully resumed ; and although he has signed his name with, 

 his colleagues to numerous papers claiming it as a permanent stipu- 

 lated right, unalienable but by our own renunciation, and in no wise 

 held at the will of the British king, he will not be thought so simple 

 as to have believed a word of what he has concurred in saying, or 

 to have imagined that at the treaty of 1783, the situation of the par- 

 ties was such that the United States could bargain for the fishing 

 liberties, or receive them otherwise than as precarious and tempo- 

 rary grants, resumable at the will of the grantor, so as to leave us 

 *' without any title to them whatsoever.^^ Was Mr. Russell ignorant, 

 that through a large portion of the Revolutionary war, it was a de- 

 liberate and determined purpose of Congress that the United States 

 should include the northern British provinces ? That express pro- 

 vision for the admission of Canada into the Union, was made, in the 

 Confederation of 1781 ? That, finally, when Congress prescribed 

 the boundary line, which, for the sake of peace, they would ac- 

 cept, and which was that stipulated in the treaty, they passed va- 

 rious resolutions, declaring the rights of the United States in the 

 fisheries, and the necessity of stipulating for them, if possible, by 

 the treaty ; but that under no circumstances, whatever, were they 

 to be given up ? That in all the deliberations of Congress the ne- 

 cessity of this reservation was avowedly connected with the aban- 

 donment of the pretension to include all the northern provinces in 

 the Confederation ? That the terms of the treaty of 1783, or ra- 

 ther of the preliminaries of 1782, which were word for word the 

 f^ame, were almost entirely dictated by the United States ? That 

 this very third article, securing the fisheries, and that very portion 

 of it stipulating for the liberty within British jurisdiction, was made 

 a sine qua non, by the American commissioners, two of whom ex- 

 pressly declared thai they would not sign the treaty without it? and 

 to solve Mr. Kussell's scruples, whether an interest of the State of 



