I answered that the anticipated operation of the Act of 3d March, 1815, must necessarily have been estimated subject to the counteraction of foreign regulations. While the restric tions and prohibitions of foreign powers acting upon our trade continued, it might be very questionable how an offer of abol ishing our discriminating duties, which might be accepted by some and rejected by others, would work. But reciprocity is the law of freedom applied to the intercourse between nations, as equal rights form the standard of freedom in civil society. This great principle was assumed at the very period of our Declaration of Independence, and had formed the basis of our commercial policy ever since. I well recollected it was contained in a report of Mr. Jefferson to Congress while he was Secretary of State; and all the discriminating duties and restrictions ever introduced into our laws had been merely defensive, to counteract the like- restrictions and discrimina tions of others. We had never sanctioned the restrictive prin ciple by treaty, but always reserved to ourselves the power of counteraction. Much less had we ever assented to it with the admission that it was to operate disadvantageously to our selves, to cast away advantages derived from the superior skill

of our navigators, by our own act, like loading- with stone the rider of a race-horse to make him as heavy as his competitor. But, notwithstanding my argument, it was determined that we should accept the basis of an unequal discrimination, though adhering to an apparent and nominal reciprocity. Mr. Gallatin has suggested a mode of effecting this to which we are here after to refer. The President determined on this course, at least with a view to ascertain what degree of disproportion would be insisted upon by France, and with the reserve that even in acceding to the principle we shall still have the power of breaking off upon the detail. I am to write, therefore, to the Baron, and, still objecting to the principle, to enquire lu/iat reduction of the discriminating duties he proposes.

25th. I made a draft of a note for the French Minister, according to the determination yesterday taken, and sent it to the President. He returned it with a suggestion of two slight alterations.

2/tri. I wrote a note to the Baron Hyde de Neuville, the French Minister, upon the commercial negotiation, requesting him to specify more particularly the reduction of discriminating duties by France and the United States to which he is willing to agree, and proposing that he should send it in the form of an article of a Convention.

3Oth. Mr. Bresson, of the French Legation, brought me a confidential note from the Baron Hyde de Neuville, upon our negotiation. Instead of the single article which, in pursuance of his own suggestion, I. had requested him to present, spe cifically stating what reduction of the discriminating duties France was disposed to admit, he has produced an argument with a project of a Convention in five or six articles, and inti mations that others will be indispensable, and among the rest a Consular Convention. I called at the President's with this note, and met Calhoun there. It is apparent that the Baron de Neuville has no intention of coming for the present to the conclusion of a Convention.

May 5th. The Russian Minister, Poletica, called at the office and showed me in confidence a letter of instructions from his Government, giving a general view of the Emperor's policy as

essentially pacific ; setting forth some complaints against the Porte, but manifesting the intention of maintaining the utmost moderation in the relations of Russia with that power, and speaking with strong disapprobation and alarm at the revolu

Here occurs the first blank in this diary. The pressure of several weeks in arrear had become too great for endurance. Although the notes made by the writer, to aid his recollection in making up the text, still remain to show his intention, the course of current events was too strong to render it possible to go back. Hence this interval of several months.

PHILADELPHIA, October /th. — Towards evening I called at Charles J. Ingersoll's, and, not finding him at home, at his brother Joseph R. Ingersoll's, with whom I had some conver sation concerning the cause of L. Harris against W. D. Lewis. I left with him J. R. Hurd's letter to me of September, 1817, and requested him to have a supplementary deposition of Hurd taken, to prove that he did write me that letter. The trial is to come on in November. While I was with Ingersoll, his brother Charles came in, with whom I walked to his house. I had received from him a few days before I left Boston a letter requesting me to call on him as I should pass through Phila delphia, for something concerning which he wished to speak to me ; and to dine with him. But, learning on my arrival here that his wife had been a few days since almost dying, and was yet confined to her bed with this raging disease of intermitting fever, I had concluded he could with no con venience receive company to dinner, and had conditionally promised J. Sergeant to dine to-morrow with him.

The point upon which Ingersoll had wished to speak to me was this. He asked me whether, at the negotiation of the Treaty of Ghent, I had proposed to grant to the British the right of navigating the Mississippi River as a compensation for an extension of our right to the fisheries. I said, No ; I had made no such proposition ; but that the British Plenipoten tiaries had notified to us that they considered our rights of

fishing within the British provincial jurisdiction, stipulated by an article of the Treaty of Peace of 1783, as annulled by the war, and that they would not renew that article. At the same time they demanded an article in the proposed treaty securing to them the right of navigating the Mississippi. Our answer insisted that the Treaty of Peace of 1783 was not and could not be annulled by the war ; that to pretend otherwise would be to say that our independence was annulled by the war. But in that Treaty of 1783 there was a stipulation that the British should enjoy forever the right of navigating the Mississippi, and, holding as we did that treaty to be binding, we declined agreeing to any new stipulation to that effect. In the course of the discussion we made a proposal to the British Plenipo tentiaries to adjust the difference by renewing both the articles. To this Mr. Clay objected, but he finally signed the note which made the offer, saying that he reserved to himself the right, if the whole treaty should displease him, finally to decline sign ing it. There was another proposal to renew an article of Mr. Jay's treaty, giving access to the British traders from Canada to the Indians within our Territories. To this Mr. Clay de clared that if it should be agreed to, and also the article giving them the navigation of the Mississippi, he would not sign the treaty. Mr. Clay wished to give prodigious importance to this British right of navigating the Mississippi, and fancied they would eagerly snatch at it, as an equivalent for the old fishing article. But the truth was, that they set so little value by it that they rejected our proposal without hesitation, and offered us a counter-proposal to renounce the rights on both sides, which we in our own turn rejected, and I then declared if it should be accepted that /would not sign the treaty.

Ingersoll said that it was intended to make use of this inci dent upon a future occasion against me, and that I shall be charged as specially the person who would have yielded to the British the right of navigating the Mississippi for an extension of the fisheries.

I said I had no doubt it would be used against me wherever and whenever it could serve a turn. It had already been used against me in the Kentucky newspapers, and Mr. Clay, in one

of his speeches to the House of Representatives in Congress, had made a statement of this incident, not in the most candid

manner. For he had represented the proposal for allowing to the British the navigation of the Mississippi as having been made by a majority of the American Plenipotentiaries, he being in the minority, without acknowledging that he had signed the note by which the offer was made, and without disclosing how very lightly the concession of which he would fain make so much was estimated by the British, and how promptly they had rejected it. But, in fact, I was not the person who made the proposal for renewing the two articles ; it originated with Mr. Gallatin, who knew and insisted that it could never be anything to the British but a mere naked right, and of no more detriment to us than use to them. I told Ingersoll that I could show him at Washington in my private papers all the documents exhibiting the true state of this affair, including the copy of the note to the British Plenipotentiaries, containing the proposal, signed by Mr. Clay, as well as by all the other American Commissioners.

WASHINGTON, I3th. — At the office Edward Wyer called, and Mr. Canning, the British Minister. He came to enquire whether we could deliver up a certain captain of a British fishing vessel, belonging to the island of Newfoundland, who ran away with his vessel and her fare of fish, and, after disposing of part of his cargo by smuggling on our coast, entered one of our Eastern ports and was there seized for a breach of our revenue laws. The crime of which this man is impeached is a statute piracy both by the British laws and our own. But our tribunals can take cognizance only of offences against our own law, which can operate only upon offences within our jurisdiction; they cannot try this man either upon our statute, which he has not, or upon the British statute, which he has transgressed.

I told Mr. Canning that I thought we could not deliver up this man, and referred him to several cases of a similar character which have occurred before. He made some ques tion as to the obligation by the laws of nations to deliver up atrocious criminals, and referred to a passage in Vattel to that effect.

I admitted that there was such a passage in Vattel, but said it was voluntary law. In practice, nations did as they pleased; some did and some did not deliver up foreign criminals. Eng land, I believed, did not. I mentioned to him the case of the pirates and murderers on board the schooner Plattsburg. Four of these were taken up in Denmark, one in Sweden, one in France, and one in Prussia. We had demanded the delivery of them all. Denmark and Sweden had delivered, and we had tried, convicted, and executed the men. But France and Prussia had refused to deliver; France alleging that she could deliver only after proof of the man's guilt, which could be proved only by the trial ; and Prussia, which took the trouble of sending the man from Dantzig to Elsineur, where ample testimony was produced against him, still refused to deliver him up because he did not confess his guilt. But with us the question was of the authority to deliver up. The Executive had no such authority; and if a warrant to take up the man should issue, the first judge upon whom he should call would discharge him upon a habeas corpus.

"Aye !" said Canning, "this comes of a republican govern ment."

" Why," said I, " we must take republican government, like others, for better for worse; the personal security of individuals is a favorite object of republican government, but the want of authority was not confined to them. It had been the answer given by the Governor of Canada to our application for the delivery of fugitive slaves."