e.

"I request you, should the blessing of heaven preserve the
life of your son, Charles Francis, and make him worthy of
your approbation, to give it at your own time to him as a
token of remembrance of my father, who gave it to me, and
of yours.

"JOHN QUINCY ADAMS."
"My son Charles Francis Adams."

[Footnote]
* See Ante, p. 131.
[End of Footnote]

The negotiations of 1815 and 1818 were under the control
of as dauntless and uncompromising a spirit, and one quite
as alive to the value of the fisheries and the dishonor of
abandoning them as that of John Adams himself. If John Quincy
Adams, the senior envoy at Ghent, and the Secretary of State
in 1818, had consented to a treaty bearing the construction
which is lately claimed he never could have gone home to face
his father. When the War of 1812 ended, Great Britain set
up the preposterous claim that the war had abrogated all treaties,
and that with the treaty of 1783 our rights in the fisheries
were gone. There was alarm in New England; but it was quieted
by the knowledge that John Quincy Adams was one of our representatives.
It was well said at that time that, as

"John Adams saved the fisheries once, his son would a second
time."

When someone expressed a fear that the other commissioners
would not stand by his son, the old man wrote in 1814, that--

"Bayard, Russell, Clay, or even Gallatin, would cede the
fee-simple of the United States as soon as they would cede
the fisheries." (pp. 21-22).

These fisheries still support the important city of Gloucester,
and are a very valuable source of wealth to the hardy and
enterprising people who maintain them. Their story is full
of romance. A touching yearly ceremonial is celebrated at
the present time in Gloucester in commemoration of the men
who are lost in this dangerous employment.

But the value of the fisheries does not consist chiefly in
historic association or in the wealth which they contribute
to any such community.

They are the nursery of seamen, more valuable and less costly
than the Naval School at Annapolis. They train the men who
are employed in them to get to be at home on the sea. They
are valuable for naval officers and for sailors. Whenever
there shall be a war with a naval power, they will be thrown
out of employ, and will seek service in our Navy. All the
English authorities, I believe, concur in this opinion. I
read in my speech a very interesting letter from Admiral Po