Massachusetts is an interest of the whole Union-that one of those two commissioners was a citizen of South-Carolina? If Mr. Russell is ignorant of all this, it only shows his incompetency to give any opinion the subject. If he is not, with what colour of justice can he pretend, from the relative situation of the parties to the treaty of 1783, that the pretension of having reserved the fishing liberty as a permanent participation of jurisdiction, while abandoning the claim to the territory itself, was a vain-glorious boast, too ridiculous to deserve an answer?

Mr. Russell does not leave us, however, to indirect inferences, for the conclusion, that in his estimates, a great interest of Massa chusetts was of none to the rest of the Union; for he expressly says, in his original letter of 11th February, 1815, and in his se cond revision of it, published in the National Gazette of 10th May, that the people of the whole Western Country, the "unoffending "citizens of an immense tract of territory," were 66 NOT AT ALL "benefited by the fishing privilege."

In the revision of the duplicate, for the eye of the House of Representatives, and of the nation, made in 1822, this passage is one of those which appears to have smitten the conscience of the writer; for in that version, he qualified the words not at all, by adding to them, "or but faintly," so that it reads, "the unoffending citi

zens of an immense tract of territory, not at all, OR BUT FAINTLY, "benefited by the fishing privilege," but then again, as if grudging even this concession to the fishermen, he takes care in the same sentence to reduce it in degree as much as he enlarges it in extent, by adding to his "doubtful accommodation of a few fishermen," the words " annually decreasing in number."

It was not so that the patriots and sages of our Revolution were wont to reason or to feel. On the 19th of June, 1779, a resolution was moved in Congress, by Mr. Gerry-" That it is essential to "the welfare of these United States, that the inhabitants thereof, "at the expiration of the war, should continue to enjoy the free "and undisturbed exercise of their common right to fish on the "Banks of Newfoundland, and the other fishing banks and seas of "North America, preserving inviolate the treaties between France and the said States."

In the debate upon this resolution, a motion was made by Mr. John Dickinson, to insert the word ALL, before these United States," and the word was inserted by a vote of ten States out of twelve. And so, on the 24th of June, the resolution passed--that it was essential to the welfare of all these United States, that they should continue to enjoy the fisheries after the war.

It is, indeed, only upon the principle that an interest important to one section of the Union, is and ought to be considered and supported as the interest of the whole, that a right of excluding British subjects from the navigation of the Mississippi, could be claimed or contended for, as the interest of the whole Union. It is an interest, whether great or small, essentially local, and admitting to the fullest

extent, that it is, nevertheless, an interest of the whole Union, I only claim that other interests, alike local in their exercise, should be entitled to the same benefit. If the gain by the war, of a right to interdict British subjects from descending the Mississippi river, had been to the people of the West an object of profit as great as the privation of the fishing liberties by the same war would have been to the people of the East an object of loss, the interests, as concerned the whole, would have been equally balanced; but inasmuch as the duty of preserving possessions already and before enjoyed, is paramount to that of making new acquisitions, the principle of equity, as well as the spirit of union, would have dictated as the true policy, that of maintaining both interests in the state in which they had been before the war, rather than that of sacrificing one part of the Union for the profit of another.

If the comparative value of the two interests had been as disproportionate as they have been represented by Mr. Russell, and the balance of value had been on the side to which he assigns it, still the question of right, remaining the same, the small interest of the East could not with justice have been sacrificed to the greater interest of the West, without compensation. For although the whole Union may possess the power of preferring the interests of the many to those of the few, they have no power of arbitrary disposal over the liberties of the smallest portion of the community. If, by a solemn article of the Constitution, it is provided that the private property of the humblest individual shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation, how much more imperious is the prohibition of taking away the scanty and hard-earned livelihood of a few fishermen, even were they annually decreasing in number, to bestow new and exclusive benefits upon a distant portion of population, without compensation to the indigent, without consolation to the bereaved sufferer.

CONCLUSION.

THE interests of the West are the interests of the whole Unionand so are the interests of the East;-and let the statesmen who are the servants of the whole, beware of setting them in conflict with each other. A review of these papers will show that the interest really at stake in the negotiation of Ghent, a deep and important stake, was an interest of the East; that there was no Western interest affected by the article first proposed by Mr. Gallatin, or by the amendment finally offered to the British plenipotentiaries at his proposal, and rejected; that the only plausible objection to it, rested upon a gratuitous assumption, contrary to all reason and experience, that it would have given a right of access to, and of intercourse with, our Indians, to the British. This, the British had possessed by another article of another treaty, acknowledged to be extinguished by the war-but it would no more have been granted to them, by a right to navigate the Mississippi, than by a right to enter the harbour of New-York. The whole argument rested upon a fallacy; a mis-statement of the question. Happy would it have been for Mr. Russell, if, after assenting and pledging his signatures to the decision of the majority, he had as cautiously withheld from his government, and his country, the allegation of his reasons for having voted against it, as he did at the time of the discussion, from his colleagues. But, in the vehemence of his zeal to vindicate his motives for one unfortunate vote at Ghent, which but for himself would probably never have been known to the world, he has been necessitated to assert principles of international and municipal law, and to put forth statements as of fact, more unsubstantial than the pageant of a vision. He has been reduced to the melancholy office of misrepresenting the subject of which he treats, the conduct and sentiments of his colleagues in a great national trust and his own. He has been compelled to disavow his own signatures, to contradict his own assertions, and to charge himself with his own interpolations. He has been forced to enter the lists as the champion of his country's enemy, upon a cause which he had been specially entrusted to defend and maintain-to allege the forfeiture of liberties which he had been specially instructed not to surrender to magnify by boundless exaggerations, an ideal, and to depreciate in equal proportion, a real, interest of his country-to profess profound respect for the integrity and talents of men, while secretly denouncing their conduct as treacherous and absurd—and, finally, to traduce before the Representative Assembly of the nation, the character of the absent, and the memory of the dead.

It has been my duty, not only in justice to my own character and to that of the colleagues with whom I acted, but in respectful deference to the opinion of that nation of which we were, and two of us still are, the servants, to justify the conduct thus denounced in

the face of the country-and to prove that the letter which contained that denunciation was a tissue of misrepresentations. The attack of Mr. Russell was at first secret-addressed to the Executive officer of the administration, at the head of the department, under 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 believe that he can turn his 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 bringing 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 letter, in a newspaper; and when the day of retribution comes, disclosing 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 personal 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 poisons."

If the doctrines of Mr. Russell are true, the liberties of the people of the United States in the Newfoundland, Gulf of St. Lawrence, 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 accommodation 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 American to the British plenipotentiaries, on the 1st of December, 1814, gave unrestrained and undefined 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

fisheries, are held at the will, not of the king of Great Britain, but of the people of the United States themselves, founded upon national right, unbroken possession, and irrevocable acknowledgment -That their value, both immediate and remote, direct and consequential, 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 unrestrained 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 customhouse 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 statesmen at that time. Those estimates had been confirmed by an experience 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, though I trust it is far remote, when 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 defence 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 comprehensive than party spirit or sectional prejudice ever gave or ever can give, I 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 Revolutionary 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 disaffected part of the country.