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fisheries, are held at the will, not of the king of Great Britain, bui 

 of the people of the United States themselves, founded upon na- 

 tional right, unbroken possession, and irrevocable acknowled<;ment 

 — That their value, both immediate and remote, direct and conse- 

 quential, is immensely important, not only to the Commonwealth of 

 Massachusetts, but to the whole Union — That the proposition made 

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

 would, if accepted, have given to the British, instead of an unre- 

 strained and undefined access to our Indians, no access to them 

 whatever — That it would have given them access, even to the 

 Mississippi river, only from a single spot in the British territories ; 

 and a right to descend the river only with merchandise upon which 

 the duties should have been paid, and subject to all the custom* 

 house regulations. 



The question in relation to the Mississippi, can never be revived. 

 That spectre is forever laid. Great Britain has not only disavowed 

 the claim to it which we would have admitted as valid, she has 

 abandoned that upon which she herself exclusively rested it. Of 

 its value, in confirmation of the opinions which I have expressed, 

 I have given extracts from the debates in parliament, on the peace 

 of 1782, which show how it was estimated by her greatest states- 

 men at that time. Those estimates had been confirmed by an ex- 

 perience of thirty years. The slumbers of the unoffending citizens 

 of the Western Country, can, therefore, never more be, if they 

 ever were, disquieted by the visits of this apparition to the 

 glimpses of the moon* But the day may come, thoujih I trust it is 

 far remote, vvhcn the title to our fishing liberties, may again be in 

 peril as imminent as it was at the negotiation of Ghent. And if, in 

 that day, the American statesmen who may be charged with the de- 

 fence and support of the rights, liberties, and interests of their 

 country, should deem it among the qualifications for their office to 

 possess some knowledge of the laws of nations, some acquaintance 

 with the history of their country, and some patriotism more com- 

 prehensive than party spirit or sectional prejudice ever gave or 

 ever can give, t trust in God that their proficiency will have led 

 them to the discovery, that all treaties, and all articles of treaties, 

 and all liberties recognised in treaties, are not abrogated by war ; 

 that our fishing liberties were neither before nor since the Revolu- 

 tionary war, held at the mere pleasure of the British crown ; and 

 that the lawful interests and possessions of one section of the Union 

 are not to be sacrified for the imaginary profit of another, either by 

 disparaging their value, or by casting them away as the interests of 

 a disoffecled part of the. covntrih 



