tish Traders and Agents access to our Indians. If this access, owing to existing circumstances, had not hitherto, to any great extent, been practically derived from the right to approach and to navigate the Mississippi, yet this right, having become the only means of access, would undoubtedly have been made the thoroughfare of this nefarious intercouse. If I erred in this opinion, still I should hope to find charity for my motives. As a citizen of Massachusetts, I believed that justice and sound policy required that we should treat fairly and liberally every other section of the Union, and to do as we would be done by. As a minister of the United States, it was my duty to act impartially towards the great whole.

The inconsistency of Mr. Adams' doctrine with his conduct, in relation to the fishing liberty, needs no illustration. If that liberty was, as he alleged, inseparable from the general right, why separate them, by offering a specific proposition for the one, and leaving the other to rest on the treaty of 1783? If this liberty was, by our instructions, included in the right, why discuss it, as those instructions forbid us to bring that right into discussion? If this liberty was an attribute of our Independence, why rely for its continuance on the peculiarity of a treaty, and at the same time offer to make it an article of another treaty, where there could be no such peculiarity to perpetuate it? If that liberty was indeed an attribute of our Independence, I say that it depended on no treaty, but on those eternal principles on which it had been declared previous to any treaty-and on that high spirit and resistless energy which dictated and accomplished that declaration. When-, ever that Independence, or any of the essential attributes of the sovereignty, which necessarily results from it, shall be denied or questioned, I trust in God and the valour, not of the West only, but of all, that we shall not resort to the dreams of a visionary, or to the dead letter of a treaty, to assert our rights and rank among the nations of the world.

1

I shall now close this defence against an unprovoked and unprincipled attack, trusting it, for my vindication, with the justice and liberality of my fellow citizens. If I had been previously entrusted with the remarks of Mr. Adams, as he frankly was with the paper which has mainly been the subject of them, I should have had an opportunity of simultaneously offering these explanations,. and been spared the unpleasant necessity of thus appealing to the public. If I have not retorted the virulence and acrimony of Mr. Adams, it is because I have not felt them sufficiently to forget the respect which I owe to myself and to the public. I regret, equally with Mr. Adams, the necessity which he has supposed to exist for the virulent character of his remarks, but I shall have abundant reason to rejoice, if, in directing the infirmities of his temper against me, they shall have been diverted from a course in which they might have been disastrous to the country.

JONATHAN RUSSELL.

From the National Intelligencer of July 17, 1822.

MR. ADAMS' REJOINDER TO MR. RUSSELL.

Mr. Jonathan Russell having thought proper to transfer the scene of his attack upon the character and conduct of his colleagues, the majority of the late mission to Ghent, and especially upon mine, from the House of Representatives of the United States, where he first volunteered to bring it forward, to the newspapers, it becomes necessary for my defence, and that of my colleagues, against this assault, to apply to his new statements and representations a few of those "correctives" which, at the call of the House of Representatives, I did apply to the original and duplicate of his letter of 11th February, 1815.

The paper published by Mr. Russell in the Boston Statesman, of the 27th of June last, bears the same relation to truth that his original letters bear to their duplicates, and his sentiments to his signatures.

Nearly two columns of the paper published in the Boston Statesman, are occupied with a narrative of circumstances which preceded, attended, and followed, the delivery, by Mr. Russell, at the Department of State, on the 22d of April last, of the paper purporting to be a duplicate of his letter of 11th February, 1815, from Paris, to the then Secretary of State. In the course of this narrative, Mr. Russell makes the following admission; how reluctantly, the very structure of the sentence in which it is contained, will show; and it is proper that it should be exhibited in his own words :

"I certainly did believe that I was permitted to make those cor"rections of the copy in possession, which appeared to me to be proper to exhibit my case most advantageously before that tribu"nal"-[the tribunal of the public.]

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The reasons of Mr. Russell for believing that he was permitted, in 1822, to make corrections which happened to suit his own purposes, in a paper furnished by himself to be communicated to the House of Representatives of the United States, as a specific letter written by him in Paris, in the year 1815, are as singular and surprising as the belief itself. They consist of insinuations and inferences that he had furnished the paper at my solicitation; that the word " duplicate," written upon it, with his own hand, gave no further intimation or assurance that it was so; that I had the sole power to publish it or not, as I might judge proper, and to consult my own feelings and interests in forming my decision; and that the paper was not to be exhibited to the public without the previous examination and consent of the ADVERSE PARTY. And with these ingenious principles, he has interwoven a statement of facts, with which he has believed himself permitted to take the same liberty that he had taken with his own letter; making in them those corrections which appeared to him necessary to exhibit his case most advantageously before the tribunal of the public.

Frail and tottering as is this scaffolding to support the cause of Mr. Russell's candour, I am concerned to say, that by a mere statement of the real facts, it must be taken entirely from under him. The real facts are these:

On the 17th of January last, the House of Representatives of the United States adopted the following resolution:

"Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to cause to "be laid before this House, all the correspondence which led to the Treaty of "Ghent, together with the Protocol, which has not been made public, and "which, in his opinion, it may not be improper to disclose."

In the ordinary course of business, this resolution was by the President referred to the Department of State, to report the papers to be communicated to the House, in compliance with the call.

In examining among the archives of the Department for those papers, I found among them a short letter from Mr. Russell to the Secretary of State, dated the 25th of December, 1814, the day after the signature of the treaty. It was not marked private, but it related principally to Mr. Russell's own affairs; and, referring to the joint letter of the mission, of the same 25th of December, 1814, in which it had been stated that a majority of it had determined to offer to the British an article confirming the navigation of the Mississippi to the British, and the fisheries to us, as stipulated in the treaty of 1783, it acknowledged, IN CANDOUR, that he, (Mr. Russell,) was in the minority on that occasion, and reserved to himself the power of communicating thereafter his reasons for being in the minority.

With Mr. Russell's candour in the transaction, at the time, I shall not now trouble the public. It was in the examination of the files for the purpose of answering the call of the House, that I first discovered the existence of this letter; and a question occurred to me whether it should be communicated with the other documents to the House or not. It was not strictly within the letter of the call, for it was not a part of the correspondence which led to the treaty -having been written the day after the treaty was signed. It had no bearing upon the information which had been assigned to the House as the motive for the call; and the only fact relating to the negotiation which it communicated, was, that upon one vote which had been taken in the joint mission during the negotiation, and that vote upon a question whether an offer should be made, which, when made, had been rejected, Mr. Russell had been in the minority, and reserved to himself the power of assigning his reasons, thereafter, for the purpose of vindicating his motives. It was doubtful whether it would be proper to disclose this difference of opinion, and Mr. Russell's solicitude to vindicate his motives for voting against a rejected offer, which had terminated in nothing. But, on the other hand, this might be, of all the documents relating to the negotiation, the most desirable one to the purposes for which the call had been made. The call might have been made with the special intention of eliciting this letter, or the disclosure of the fact which it attested. To have withheld the letter might have given

But

Mr.

rise to surmises of special motives for veiling from the eye of Congress, and of the nation, the discovery of that fact. As Mr. Russell was upon the spot, and a member of the House, I determined to mention the letter to him, and place it at his option whether it should be communicated to the House or not. I did so, at my house, as he has stated; and it was on the 26th of January. Mr. Russell did not say that he had no distinct recollection of the letter, to which I alluded, and that he wished to see it before he gave his consent to its publication. I had not asked his consent to its publication. I had told him there was such a letter; and left it at his option whether it should be communicated in the answer to the call of the House of Representatives, or not. His first reply was, that he thought it was a private letter, which it would be improper to communicate to the House; but, after a pause, as if recollecting himself, he said he wished to see the letter, before giving a definitive answer. To this I immediately assented. Russell accordingly repaired to the office, and saw his letter; not in my presence, or in the room occupied by me, but in that of Mr. Bailey, the clerk who has charge of the diplomatic documents. Mr. Russell then desired to examine the whole of the correspondence relating to the Ghent negotiation, and afterwards twice in succession requested to be furnished with copies of one paragraph of the instructions to the commissioners, of 15th April, 1813. That paragraph is the one which, in the duplicate, is cited so emphatically, and with so many cumulative epithets, in support of the charge against the majority of the mission, of having violated both the letter and the spirit of their explicit and implicit instructions. After all these examinations, and after a request to be furnished with a copy of this most pregnant paragraph, in all of which he was indulged to the extent of his wishes, he told me that he saw no objection to the communication to the House of his separate letter of 25th December, 1814; with the exception of a part of it, not relating to the negotiation. He was informed that the part only indicated by himself would be communicated; and accordingly that part only was communicated. Mr. Russell then added, that there was another letter, written at Paris, conformably to the indication in that of 25th December, 1814, and containing his reasons therein alluded to; and which he wished might also be communicated with the rest of the documents, to the House. This was the first intimation I had ever received of the existence of the letter of 11th February, 1815; and I told Mr. Russell that, if it could be found upon the files of the Department, it should be communicated with the rest. I directed, accordingly, that search should be made, and afterwards that it should be repeated, among all the files of the Department, for this letter. It was not to be found. After a delay of several days, for repeating these ineffectual searches, I deemed it necessary to report, in answer to the call of the House; and the documents were all sent, including that portion of his letter of 25th December, 1814, which he himself had marked for communication.

It was not alone to me that Mr. Russell had expressed the wish that his letter of 11th February, 1815, might be communicated with the other documents to the House. He had, as appears by the statement of Mr. Bailey, repeatedly manifested the same wish to him. He had even gone so far as to inform him, that he had a copy of it at Mendon, and to inquire of him whether a copy of it from himself would be received at the Department, for communication to the House. He did not, indeed, make the same inquiry of me, nor was I then informed that he had made it to Mr. Bailey. If I had been, I should have immediately answered that it would be received and communicated. I knew not what were the contents of the letter: but I knew that, whatever they might be, I could have no objection to their being communicated, at the desire of Mr. Russell himself; and far from suspecting him capable of believing himself permitted to make any alterations in the copy, to suit present purposes, I should have thought the bare suspicion an outrage upon his honour.

But I had no desire of my own that the letter should be communicated. I regretted even that Mr. Russell had chosen that the part of his letter of 25th December, 1814, which announced his disagreement with the majority of the mission, should be communicated. I regretted that he had ever thought proper to inform the Secretary of State what had been his vote upon that occasion; and I was perfectly assured, that there never had existed a moment when there could have been any necessity for him to vindicate his motives for that vote. I was assured that neither the government nor the nation would ever have inquired of him how he had voted, if he had not been so over-earnest in his solicitude to tell them. And I was equally convinced, that after he had told them, it would not ultimately redound to his credit. I had no feelings of enmity towards Mr. Russell. Our private intercourse had been, for more than ten years, that of friendship, which, in no instance whatever, had been, in word, deed, or thought, violated by me. As an associate in a trust of great importance, the general result of which had been satisfactory to the country, he had always had claims, sacred to me, to my peculiar regard. With the high and honourable duties of that great trust, I had mingled no little expedients of selfaggrandizement by the debasement of any of my colleagues. I had sown no seed of future accusation against a brother commissioner, in the shell of a pretended vindication of myself. I had laid up no root of rancorous excitement, to be planted, after the lapse of years, in the soil of sectional prejudice, or party prepossession. I lamented to discover that Mr. Russell had not so dealt with his colleagues of the majority; and I was mortified to see the earnestness with which he appeared determined to blazon forth this disagreement of opinion, and the part that he had taken in it, to the world. I felt that it neither became me to object to the communication of either of his letters to the House, if desired by him, nor officiously to offer him facilities for the communication, which