10 ARGUMENT OP GREAT BRITAIN. 



On the 10th December, Mr. Adams entered in his diary a reference 

 to another consultation as follows: . 



" Mr. Gallatin said that we should certainly lose that part of the 

 fisheries; that our ground for claiming them was untenable, and we 

 never could support it; that he was very sorry it had ever been 

 stipulated in the Peace of 1783, and he would not have accepted it 

 as an offer. 



" I told him that my name was to an official paper assuming the 

 ground which he now pronounced untenable, and so was his. 



" He said that we had only assumed it as the principle upon "which 

 our Government had instructed us not to bring the fisheries into dis- 

 cussion; that he did not consider himself as pledged to it at all as 

 his own opinion. 



"I told him that I was pledged to it as mine; and believed the 

 ground to be perfectly tenable and solid." (British Counter-Case, 

 App., p. 143.) 



On the 14th December, Mr. Adams, referring to a further con- 

 sultation with reference to the fisheries, entered in his diary as 

 follows : 



" I finally told my colleagues that I saw the difference between 

 them and me was, that they had determined ultimately to give up the 

 point, and I had not. I believed the ground we had originally 

 taken to be good and solid. I could make no distinction between 

 the different articles of the Treaty of 1783. If I admitted this day 

 that a half of one of its articles was abrogated by the war, I should 

 give the enemy an argument to say to-morrow that the other half is 

 abrogated equally. If we gave up the liberty to-day, we might be 

 called to give up the right to-morrow. Our instructions were in 

 general terms. They authorized no such distinction as that now made, 

 and no new instruction concerning the fisheries has been given us, 

 since our Government knows the pretension of Great Britain. 



"Mr. Gallatin said he had always thought our ground upon that 

 point untenable, that I had now almost a majority against me, and 

 he did not wish we should commit ourselves to anything pre- 

 12 eluding us from abandoning our ground at last. Mr. Russell 

 said that he considered everything of a permanent nature and 

 founded on natural right in the Treaty of 1783 as not affected by a 

 subsequent war; but privileges granted by the treaty, and which we 

 should not have enjoyed without it, he thought were abrogated by 

 war. (British Counter-Case, App., p. 147.) 



" I said there was no grant of new privileges in the treaty. The 

 liberties, as well as the rights, were merely a continuation of what 

 had always been enjoyed. It was necessary for Jhe fishermen to go 

 to the part of the coast frequented by the fish, and when, by the 

 independence of the United States, it became a foreign jurisdiction, 

 we had a right to reserve the liberty of continuing to fish there, and 

 the circumstance of the jurisdiction alone occasioned the change of 

 the expression. 



" Mr. Clay said he did not wish to make up his mind upon the 

 subject until it should be absolutely necessary. He said we should 

 make a damned bad treaty, and he did not know whether he would 



