Great Britain had reflected the highest
honor upon our navy; while on land we had demonstrated, if not the
absolute impossibility, certainly the serious difficulty and danger,
of an invasion of our soil by any foreign power. We had risen greatly
in the estimation of the world as to our capacity for war, and we had
learned the especial importance of maintaining the fisheries as the
nursery of our sailors. The State Department was under the direction
of John Quincy Adams, who, above all statesmen of his day, was supposed
to appreciate the value of the fisheries and who had stubbornly
refused at Ghent to consent to any diminution of our fishing-rights
even if the alternative should be the continuation of the war. Yet
on the 20th of October, 1818, a treaty was concluded at London,
containing as its first and most important provision an absolute
surrender of some of our most valuable rights in the fisheries. The
negotiation was conducted by Albert Gallatin and Richard Rush, men of
established reputation for diplomatic ability and patriotic zeal. The
history of the transaction is meagre. A brief and most unsatisfactory
correspondence contains all that we know in regard to it. Neither in
the minute and important diary of Mr. Adams, nor in the private
letters, as published, of Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Rush, is there the
slightest indication of any reason for recommending, or any necessity
for conceding, the treaty.

By reference to the Third Article of the treaty of 1782, already
quoted, it will be seen that the rights of the citizens of the United
States were recognized; _first_, to take fish of every kind on the
Great Bank, and on all the other banks of Newfoundland, and also in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, and at other places in the sea _where the
inhabitants of both countries used at any time before the treaty to
fish; second_, to take fish of every kind on such part of the coast
of Newfoundland as British fishermen should use, but not to dry or cure
the same on that island; _third_, to take fish of every kind on the
coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of his Britannic Majesty's
dominions in America; _fourth_, to dry and cure fish in any of the
unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands,
and Labrador. By the provisions of the First Article of the treaty of
1818, the right to take fish on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador
was limited to certain portions of the coast, _without prejudice,
how