proposed by us, was rejected by Great Britain, whatever were her reasons for rejecting it; whether, as above suggested, (170) she might have suspected some tacit reservation, or want of faith, on our part; or supposed, from the price we at once bid for the fishing privilege, that we overrated its value, and might concede for it even more than (171) the free navigation of the Mississippi, with all its accessary advantages.

seems to create it.

(172) Let me not, in any thing which I have said, be misunderstood. In judging on the interests of the great whole, I am not disposed to undervalue the interests on any of the constituent parts. No one can more highly appreciate than I do, a branch of industry which not only adds to national wealth, but Nor can any one more warmly admire the usefulness and patriotism of those citizens who are engaged in it, and who have never ceased to deserve well of the republic. In times of peace they bring home, amidst conflicting elements, the treasures of the deep to enrich their country; and in times of war they contribute, by their skill and intrepidity, to her defence and glory. But, in our country, where all are equal, the essential security and prosperity of the many must be preferred to the convenience and minor interests of the few. In giving this preference, I will frankly confess I had to silence early prepossions and local predilections, and to listen to the councils of a more enlarged patriotism; and to this patriotism I dare appeal for my vindication, not only with those to whom I am officially responsible, but with those with whom I am more immediately connected in society, and whose interests may be considered to have been unfavourably affected by the views which I have deemed it to be my duty to adopt. I have always been willing to make any sacrifice for the fishing privilege, which its nature, or comparative importance could justify, but I conscientiously believe that the free navigation of the Mississippi, and the access to it which we expressly offered, were pregnant with too much mischief to be offered, indirectly, under our construction of the treaty; or, directly, as they were in fact offered, as a new equivalent for the liberty of taking and drying fish within the Pritish jurisdiction.

I will frankly avow, however, that my impressions were, and still are, that Great Britain, calculating on the success of the powerful expedition which she~~~ has sent against New-Orleans, confidently expected that she would have become the mistress of Louisiana and all its waters; and that she did not, in this event intend to abandon her conquest under the terms of the treaty of Ghent.

Her ministers had, almost from the commencement of the negotiation, not only affected to consider our acquisition of Louisiana as evidence of a spirit of agrandizement, but insinuated a defect in our title to it. Expecting, therefore, to obtain the free navigation of the Mississippi for nothing, she would not consent to part even with the fishing liberty as an equivalent. If she be disappointed in her views on Louisiana, and I trust in God and the valour of the west that she will be, shall not be surprised if, hereafter, she grant us the fishing privilege, which costs her absolutely nothing, without any extravagant equivalent whatever.

At any rate, we are still at liberty to negotiate for that privilege in a treaty of commerce, and to offer for it an equivalent, fair in its comparative value, and just in its relative effects; and to negotiate for it in this way is evidently more wise than to demand it as a condition of peace, or to offer for it a price beyond its worth, and which, however excessive, ruus the hazard of being refused, merely by the operation of those unaccommodating passions which are inevitably engendered by a state of war.

I have the honour to be, with the most profound respect, sir, your faithful and obedient servant, JONA. RUSSELL.

To the Hon'ble JAMES MONROE,

Sec'y of State of the United States, &c. &c. &c.

A true copy of a paper left by Jonathan Russell, esq. at the Department of State, 22d April, 1822, to be communicated to the House of Representatives of the United States.

J. Q. ADAMS, Secretary of State.

REMARKS

On a Paper delivered by Mr. Jonathan Russell, at the Department of State, on the 22d of April, 1822, to be communicated to the House of Representatives, as the duplicate of a Letter written by him at Paris, the 11th of February, 1815, to the then Secretary of State, and as the Letter called for by the Resolu tion of the House, of 19th April, 1822.

The first remark that presents itself upon this duplicate, is, that it is not a copy of the letter really written by Mr. Russell, at Paris, on the 11th of February, 1815, to the Secretary of State, and received by him. The latter was marked "private," and, as such, was not upon the files of the Department of State; and, although of the same general purport and tenor with the so-called duplicate, differed from it in several highly significant passages, of which the following parallel, extracted from the two papers, presents one example :

ORIGINAL.

"How far we conformed to this instruction, with regard to the general right to Louisiana, it is not necessary for me here to inquire; but certainly the majority believed (103) themselves permitted to offer a very explicit proposition with regard to the navigation of its principal (104) river. I believed, with them, that we were so permitted, and that we were, likewise, permitted to offer a proposition relative to the fishing liberty, and, had the occasion required it, to make proposals concerning the trade to the British East Indies. I was persuaded, that treating relative to these privileges, or discussing the obligation or expediency of granting or withholding them, respectively, violated, in no way, our instructions, or affected the general rights which we were forbidden to bring into discussion,"

DUPLICATE.

"How far we conformed to this instruction, with regard to the general right to Louisiana, it is not necessary for me here to inquire; but certainly the majority believed (103) themselves to be permitted, their own construction to the contrary notwithstanding, to offer a very explicit proposition with regard to the navigation of its principal (104) river; now, this offer, I considered, for the reasons just suggested, not to be a violation of the instructions in question, but I considered it to be against both the letter and the spirit of our other instructions of the 15th of April, 1813. By these instructions, we were explicitly and implicitly directed to avoid any stipulation which might restrain the United States from excluding the British traders from the navigation of the lakes and rivers exclusively within our own jurisdiction.' This instruction applied with the greater force to the Mississippi, because, as it is believed, it was the only river to which it could apply.

"While I believed, therefore, that we were permitted to offer a proposition relative to the fishing liberty, and that in treating concerning this liberty, or in discussing our claim to it, we in no way violated our instructions, nor affected the general rights which we were forbidden to bring into discussion, I did believe, and do still believe, that

ORIGINAL.

DUPLICATE.

we were expressly and unequivocally forbidden to offer, or to renew, a stipu lation for the free navigation, by the British, of the Mississippi, a river within our exclusive jurisdiction."

It is here seen that, while in the original letter Mr. Russell did, with the majority of his colleagues, believe that we were permitted by our instructions to make the proposition with regard to the navigation of the Mississippi, as well as a proposition relative to the fishing liberty, he had, when writing the duplicate, brought himself to the belief, not only that we were not so permitted, but that he had, even at Ghent, considered it as a direct violation both of the letter and spirit of our explicit and implicit instructions of 15th April, 1813. The solution of this difference in the mind of Mr. Russell, between the writing of the original and the duplicate of his letter, may be found in this circumstance. The proposition relating to the navigation of the Mississippi, and the fishery, was made to the British plenipotentiaries on the 1st of December, 1814. It had been discussed at the meetings of the American mission, on the preceding 28th and 29th of November. On the 24th of that month, the American plenipotentiaries had received a letter of instructions from the Secretary of State, dated 19th October, 1814, and containing the following passages :

"It has been judged proper to communicate to Congress so "much of the instructions given to you by this Department, as "would show the terms on which you were authorized to make "peace. These, as well as your communications, have been print“ed, and several copies are now forwarded to you, as it is believed "they may be usefully disposed of in Europe. Should any circum"stance have unexpectedly prolonged the negotiation, and you find "the British commissioners disposed to agree to the status ante bellum, you will understand that you are authorized to make it the "basis of a treaty."

Now, the status ante bellum, upon which we were thus expressly and unequivocally permitted to conclude a treaty, included not only the recognition of the entire treaty of peace of 1783, but the revival of the first ten articles of the treaty of 1794; not only the freedom to the British to navigate the Mississippi, but free ingress into our territories, and free trade with our Indians. And so entirely was that part of the instructions of 15th April, 1813, now cited by Mr. Russell, considered by the President as cancelled, that it was omitted from that copy, which had been communicated to Congress, of "so much of the instructions as would show the terms on which we were authorized to make peace," and of which several printed copies were thus forwarded to us. (See Wait's State Papers, vol. IX, p. 339–358.)

It was scarcely possible that, within the compass of one week, Mr. Russell should have forgotten the receipt of the instruction of

19th October, 1814, fresh from Washington; nor at all possible that he should have considered us as then bound by the instruction of 15th April, 1813, to which, in his duplicate, he now so emphatically refers. The 11th of February, 1815, was yet so recent to the date of the conclusion of the treaty, that, in writing the original of his letter, the recollection of the new instructions of October, 1814, had doubtless not escaped him. But when the duplicate was written, other views had arisen; and their aspects are discovered in the aggravation of charges against the memory of a dead, and the character of living colleagues.

But whether the real sentiments of Mr. Russell, at Paris, on the 11th of February, 1815, with regard to the transactions to which this passage relates, are to be taken as indicated in the original, or in the duplicate, certain it is that the vehement objections to the proposed article, which, in the duplicate, appear to have made so deep an impression on his mind, had as little been made known to his colleagues at the time of the discussions at Ghent, as they appear to have been to himself, when writing the original of the same letter.

The proposal, to which the whole of Mr. Russell's letter, in both its various readings, relates, was made to the British plenipotentiaries, not by a majority, but by the whole of the American mission, including Mr. Russell, as may be seen by the protocol of the conference of the 1st December, 1814, and by the letter from the American to the British plenipotentiaries, of 14th December, 1814. In that letter, already communicated to the House, the American plenipotentiaries, referring to the article in question, expressly say: "To such an article, which they viewed as merely declaratory, the undersigned had no objection, and have offered to accede :" and to that letter the name of Mr. Russell is subscribed.

At the time when the letter from Paris was written, or within a few days thereafter, all the colleagues, whose conduct it so severely censures, in relation to measures, to which Mr. Russell's sanction and signature stood equally pledged with their own, were at Paris, and in habits of almost daily intercourse with him. They little suspected the colouring which he was privately giving, without communication of it to them, of their conduct and opinions, to the heads of the government, by whom he and they had been jointly employed in a public trust of transcendent importance; or the uses to which this denunciation of them was afterwards to be turned.

Had the existence of this letter from Paris been, at the time when it was written, known to the majority of the mission, at whose proposal this offer had been made; to that majority, who believed that the article was perfectly compatible with their instructions, consistent with the argument maintained by the mission, important for securing a very essential portion of the right to the fisheries, and in nowise affecting unfavourably the interest of any section of the Union, they would doubtless have felt that its contents called much more forcibly upon them, to justify to their own government them

selves and their motives for making that proposal, than Mr. Russell could be called upon to justify himself for merely having been in the minority upon the question whether an article should be proposed, which he did actually concur in proposing, and which the adverse party had not thought worth accepting.

The writer of these remarks is not authorized to speak for his colleagues of the majority; one of whom is now alike beyond the reach of censure and panegyrick; and the other, well able, when he shall meet this disclosure, to defend himself. But he believes of them what he affirms of himself, that had they entertained of the projected article, and of the argument maintained by the mission, the sentiments avowed in either of the variations of Mr. Russell's letter from Paris, no consideration would have induced them to concur in proposing it, or to subscribe their names to a paper declaring that they had no objection to it.

Still less, if possible, would they have thought it reconcileable with their duty to their country, had they entertained those sentiments, to have subscribed, on the 25th of December, 1814, the joint letter of the mission to the Secretary of State, already communicated to Congress, and on the same day to have written the separate and secret letter, fore-announcing that of 11th of February, 1815, from Paris.

Besides the memorable variation between the original and duplicate of the letter of 11th February, 1815, which has been exhibited in parallel passages extracted from them, there are others not less remarkable. In the course of the duplicate, the total and unqualified abandonment of the rights of the poor fishermen, is compensated by an eloquent panegyric upon their usefulness to the country, their hardy industry, their magnanimous enterprise, and their patriotic self-devotion. Little of this appears in the original; and that little, in the after-thought of a postscript. Towards the close of the duplicate, the spirit of prophecy takes possession of the writer. By his "trust in God, and in the valour of the West," he foresees the victory of General Jackson at New-Orleans. He foresees the convention between the United States and Great Britain, of October, 1818. In the original there is no prophecy-no "trust in God, and in the valour of the West."

With all these varieties the two copies of the letter form an elaborate and deeply meditated dissertation to prove :

1. That the treaty between the United States and Great Britain, of 1783, the treaty which upon its face is a treaty of independence, a treaty of boundaries, a treaty of partition, as well as a treaty of peace-was, in his estimation, all his signatures at Ghent to the contrary notwithstanding, a mere treaty of peace, totally abrogated by the war of 1812.

2. That the same treaty, was a treaty sui generis, consisting of two parts; one, of rights appertaining to sovereignty and independence; and the other, of special grants and privileges; of which the former were permanent, and the latter abrogated by the war.