230 



the face of the counlry— and to prove that the letter which contain- 

 ed that denunciation was a tissue of misrepresentations. The at- 

 tack of IVIr. Russell was at first secret — addressed to the Execu- 

 tive officer of the administration, at the head of the department, un- 

 der whose instructions the mission at Ghent had acted. It was 

 made under the veil of concealment, and in the form of a private 

 letter. In that respect it had failed of its object. It had neither 

 made the Executive a convert to its doctrines, nor impaired his 

 confidence in the members of the majority? at Ghent. Defeated in 

 this purpose, after a lapse of seven years, Mr. Russell is persuaded 

 to beHeve that he can turn liis letter to account, especially with the 

 aid of such corrections of the copy in possession as the supposed loss 

 of the original would enable him to make without detection, by bring- 

 ing it before the Legislative Assembly of the Union. Foiled in 

 this assault, by the discovery of the original, he steals a march upon 

 refutation and exposure, by publishing a second variety of his let- 

 ter, in a newspaper ; and when the day of retribution comes, dis- 

 closing every step of his march on this winding stair, he turns upon 

 me, with the charge of having, by the use of disingenuous artifices, led 

 him unawares into the disclosure of a private letter, never intended 

 for the public, and seduced him to present as a duplicate, what he had 

 not intended to exhibit as such. To this new separate and person- 

 al charge, I have replied, by proving the paper which contains it 

 to be, like the letter from Paris, a tissue of misrepresentations. — 

 For the justification of myself, and of my colleagues at Ghent, 

 nothing further was necessary. But the letter of Mr. Russell from 

 Paris, contains doctrines with reference to law, and statements 

 with reference to facts, involving the rights, the harmony, and the 

 peace, of this Union. 



*' Dangerous conceits are in their nature j90Wons.'' 



If the doctrines of Mr. Russell are true, the liberties of the peo« 

 pie of the United States in the Newfoundland, Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence, and Labrador fisheries, are at this day held by no better 

 tenure than the pleasure of the king of Great Britain, and will be 

 abrogated by the first act of hostility between the two nations. 



If his statements are true, those liberties are the mere accommo- 

 dation of a few fishermen, annually decreasing in number, too 

 worthless to be accounted to the rest of the nation of any benefit 

 at all. 



If his statements are true, the propositions made by the Ameri- 

 can to the British plenipotentiaries, on the 1st of December, 1814, 

 gave unrestrained and undejined access for the British to the Indians 

 within our territories — laid our country bare to swarms of British 

 smugglers, and British emissaries — and exposed the unoffending 

 citizens of an immense territory to all the horrors of savage warfare, 



I now submit to the deliberate judgment of the nation, whether 

 I have not proved that these doctrines and statements are equally 

 and utterly without foundation — That the rights and liberties in the 



