been compelled to speak as in these remarks I have done, of a person distinguished by the favour of his country, and with whom I had been associated in a service of high interest to this Union, has been among the most painful incidents of my life. In the defence of myself and my colleagues, against imputations so groundless in themselves, at first so secretly set forth and now so wantonly promulgated before the legislative assembly of the nation, it has been impossible entirely to separate the language of self-vindication from that of reproach. With Mr. Russell 1, can also rejoice that the proposal offered on the 1st of December, 1814, was rejected by the British government, not because I believe it now, more than I did then, liable to any of the dangers and mischiefs so glaring in the vaticinations of Mr. Russell, but because both the interests to which it relates have since been adjusted in a manner still more satisfactory to the United States. I rejoice, too, that this adjustment has taken place before the publication of Mr. Russell's letter could have any possible influence in defeating or retarding it. The convention of 20th October, 1818, is the refutation of all the doctrines of Mr. Russell's letter, to which there can be no reply. It has adjusted the fishing interest upon the principle asserted by the American mission at Ghent, but disclaimed by Mr. Russell. It has given us the boundary of latitude 49, from the Lake of the Woods westward, and it has proved the total indifference of the British government to the right of navigating the Mississippi, by their abandonment of their last claim to it, without asking an equivalent for its renunciation.

With regard to the magnitude of the fishing interest which was at stake during the negotiation at Ghent, I believe the views disclosed in Mr. Russell's letter as incorrect as the principles upon which he would have surrendered it. The notification of exclusion was from all fisheries within exclusive British jurisdiction. I have shown that, historically, Great Britain had asserted and maintained exclusive proprietary jurisdiction over the whole. Had we tamely acquiesced in her principle of forfeiture, without renunciation, we should soon have found that her principle of exclusion embraced the whole. That a citizen of Massachusetts, acquainted with its colonial history, with the share that his countrymen had had in the conquest of a great part of these fisheries, with the deep and anxious interest in them taken by France, by Spain, by Great Britain, for centuries before the American revolution; acquainted with the negotiations of which they had been the knot, and the wars of which they had been the prize, between the three most powerful maritime nations of modern Europe; acquainted with the profound sensibility of the whole American Union, during the revolutionary war, to this interest, and with the inflexible energies by which it had been secured at its close; acquainted with the indissoluble links of attachment between it and the navigation, the navy, the maritime defence, the national spirit and hardy enterprise of this great republic; that such a citizen, stimulated to the discharge of duty by

a fresh instruction from his government, given at the most trying period of the war upon the very first rumour of an intention, on the part of Great Britain, to demand its surrender, not to surrender it, sooner to break off the negotiation than surrender it; that such a citizen, with the dying words of Lawrence, "Don't give up the "ship," still vibrating on his ear, should describe this interest "as "totally unnecessary for us for subsistence or occupation," and affording, "in no honest way, either commercial facility or political "advantage," as "the doubtful accommodation of a few fishermen "annually decreasing in number," is as strange and unaccountable to me as that he should deliberately sit down, two months after the treaty was concluded, and write to his government a cold-blooded dissertation to prove that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, in the principle upon which he and his colleagues had rested its future defence, and that he considered the fishing liberty "to be entirely "at an end, without a new stipulation for its revival."

Such were not the sentiments of a majority of the American commissioners at Ghent; such were, particularly, not the sentiments of the writer of these remarks. He reflects, with extreme satisfaction, upon that deep and earnest regard for this interest manifested at that time, by the executive government of the United States, in the positive and unqualified instruction of 25th June, 1814, to the commissioners, on no consideration whatever to surrender the fisheries. He rejoices that this instruction was implicitly obeyed; that the nation issued from the war with all its rights and liberties unimpaired, preserved as well from the artifices of diplomacy, as from the force of preponderating power upon their element, the seas; and he trusts that the history of this transaction, in all its details, from the instruction not to surrender the fisheries, to the conclusion of the convention of 20th October, 1818, will give solemn warning to the statesmen of this Union, in their conflicts with foreign powers, through all future time, never to consider any of the liberties of this nation as abrogated by a war, or capable of being extinguished by any other agency than our own express renunciation.

May 3, 1822.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

THE TRIPLICATE.

In the National Gazette, of 10th May, 1822, printed at Philadelphia, there was published, headed "For the National Gazette," a "Letter of Jonathan Russell, Esq. to the Hon. the Secretary of State, in relation to the negotiations at Ghent." It was dated Paris, 11th February, 1815, not marked "private," and in the same paper was accompanied by the following article, under the editorial head:

NEGOTIATIONS AT GHENT.

The call made in Congress for a particular letter of Jonathan Russell, Esq. on the subject of the negotiations at Ghent, the supposed object of that call, and the extraordinary tenour of the President's reply to it, have excited a general curiosity respecting the contents of the document, about which an air of mystery and preg nant importance was thus thrown. The President stated in his message, as our readers will recollect, that he had found the letter among his private papers, marked "private," by the writer, whose view of his own conduct and that of his colleagues was such as would demand from the two surviving members of the Ghent mission, a reply containing their view of the transactions in question; which reply, upon the principles of equal justice, ought to be communicated at the same time to Congress. The President stated, also, that he had deposited the original of the letter in the Department of State, with instructions to deliver a copy to any person who might be interested. [A copy has come into our hands, for the exactness of which we can vouch, and which we publish entire, this afternoon;] and as the House of Representatives has repeated the call for the document, in terms that have empowered the President to submit with it whatever he pleased of a relevant purport, we may expect to be soon able to lay before our readers, the communication, in the nature of an answer, which the Secretary of State had expressed a desire to be permitted to offer.

Most persons will, we apprehend, find that the ideas respecting the character of the letter, which they had been led from what has passed, to form, are in a degree erroneous. Mr. Russell has not arraigned the conduct or questioned the motives of his colleagues, who composed the majority on the point discussed-on the contrary, he has, we observe, emphatically borne testimony, towards the end of the letter, to their integrity, talents, and judgment; and his purpose seems to have been, not to prove that they erred, so much as to furnish a satisfactory apology for his having differed with them in opinion. If he marked the letter "private," it is not thence to be inferred that he meant it to remain secret for them, or absolutely; but merely that it should not be considered as a part of the public and official record of the negotiations, or otherwise than his

separate and personal explanation of his dissent in a particular and important transaction of the case. We would remark that such explanations are by no means rare in the annals of diplomacy.

[We learn, from good authority, that the first call in the House of Representatives, for the correspondence which led to the Treaty of Ghent, was not made at the instigation of Mr. Russell, nor in consequence of communications with him; and that in like manner, he had no share in the call for the private letter.] The attention of Mr. Floyd was attracted to it, we presume, by the following passage of a short extract of a letter from Mr. Russell to the Secretary of State, contained in the correspondence which the Presi dent submitted to Congress on the 25th of February.

"As you will perceive by our despatch to you, of this date, that a majority only of the mission was in favour of offering to the British plenipotentiaries, an article confirming the British right to the navigation of the Mississippi, and ours to the liberty as to the fisheries, it becomes me in candour to acknowledge, that I was in the minority on that question. I must reserve to myself the power of communicating to you, hereafter, the reasons which influenced me to differ from a majority of my colleagues on that occasion; and if they be insufficient to support my opinion, I persuade myself they will at least vindicate my motives."

That his letter may be the better understood, we shall proceed to quote that part of the official despatch to which he refers, which relates to the article mentioned. The despatch is dated Ghent, 25th December, 1814; and is among the papers communicated to Congress.

"At the first conference on the 8th of August, the British plenipotentiaries had notified to us, that the British government did not intend, henceforth, to allow to the people of the United States, without an equivalent, the liberties to fish, and to dry and cure fish, within the exclusive British jurisdiction, stipulat-" ed, in their favour, by the latter part of the third article of the treaty of peace of 1783. And, in their note of the 19th August, the British plenipotentiaries had demanded a new stipulation to secure to British subjects the right of navigating the Mississippi; a demand, which, unless warranted by another article of that same treaty of 1783, we could not perceive that Great Britain had any colourable pretence for making. Our instructions had forbidden us to suffer our right to the fisheries to be brought into discussion, and had not authorized us to make any distinction in the several provisions of the third article of the treaty of 1783, or between that article and any other of the same treaty. We had no equivalent to offer for a new recognition of our right to any part of the fisheries, and we had no power to grant any equivalent which might be asked for it by the British government. We contended that the whole treaty of 1783, must be considered as one entire and permanent compact, not liable, like ordinary treaties, to be abrogated by a subsequent war between the parties to it; as an instrument, recognising the rights and liberties enjoyed by the people of the United States, as an independent nation, and containing the terms and conditions on which the two parts of one empire had mutually agreed, thenceforth to constitute two, distinct and separate nations. In consenting by that treaty, that a part of the North American continent should remain subject to the British jurisdiction, the people of the United States had reserved to themselves the liberty, which they had ever before enjoyed, of fishing upon that part of the coasts, and of drying and curing fish upon the shores; and this reservation had been agreed to by the other contracting party. We saw not why this liberty, then no new grant, but a mere recognition of a prior right, always enjoyed, should be forfeited by a war, any more than any other of the rights of our national independence,

or why we should need a new stipulation for its enjoyment, more than we needed a new article to declare that the king of Great Britain treated with us as free, sovereign, and independent States. We stated this principle, in general terms, to the British plenipotentiaries, in the note which we sent to them, with our projet of the treaty; and we alleged it as the ground upon which no new stipulation was deemed by our government necessary to secure to the people of the United States, all the rights and liberties stipulated in their favour by the treaty of 1783. No reply to that part of our note was given by the British plenipotentiaries; but, in returning our projet of a treaty, they added a clause to one of the articles, stipulating a right for British subjects to navigate the Mississippi. Without adverting to the ground of prior and immemorial usage, if the principle were just, that the treaty of 1783, from its peculiar character, remained in force in all its parts, notwithstanding the war, no new stipulation was necessary to secure to the subjects of Great Britain, the right of navigating the Mississippi, as far as that right was secured by the treaty of 1783; as, on the other hand, no stipulation was necessary to secure to the people of the United States the liberty to fish, and to dry and cure fish within the exclusive jurisdiction of Great Britain.

"If they asked the navigation of the Mississippi, as a new claim, they could not expect we should grant it without an equivalent; if they asked it because it had been granted in 1783, they must recognise the claim of the people of the United States, to the liberty to fish, and to dry and cure fish, in question. To place both points beyond all further controversy, a majority of us determined to offer to admit an article confirming both rights; or, we offered at the same time, to be silent in the treaty upon both, and to leave out altogether the article defining the boundary from the Lake of the Woods westward. They finally agreed to this last proposal, but not until they had proposed an article stipulating for a future negotiation for an equivalent to be given by Great Britain, for the navigation of the Missisippi, and by the United States, for the liberty as to the fisheries within British jurisdiction. This article was unnecessary, with respect to its professed object, since both governments had it in their power, without it, to negotiate upon these subjects if they pleased. We rejected it, although its adoption would have secured the boundary of the 49th degree of lati⚫tude, west of the Lake of the Woods, because it would have been a formal abandonment, on our part, of our claim, to the liberty as to the fisheries, recognised by the treaty of 1783."

For the more complete comprehension of the foregoing extract, and Mr. Russell's letter, we copy the article, and two extracts from the instructions of the American commissioners.

Article offered by the American to the British Plenipotentiaries at Ghent, on the 1st of December, 1814.

"The inhabitants of the United States shall continue to enjoy the liberty to take, dry, and cure fish in places within the exclusive jurisdiction of Great Britain, as secured by the former treaty of peace; and the navigation of the river Mississippi, within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, shall remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain, in the manner secured by that treaty; and it is further agreed that the subjects of his Britannic majesty shall at all times have access, from such place as may be selected for that purpose, in his Britannic majesty's aforesaid territories, westward and within three hundred miles of the Lake of the Woods, in the aforesaid territories of the United States, to the river Mississippi, in order to enjoy the benefit of the navigation of that river, with their goods, effects, and merchandise, whose importation into the said States, shall not be entirely prohibited, on the payment of the same duties as would be payable on the importation of the same into the Atlantic ports of the said States, and on conforming with the usual custom-house regulations,"