Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/359

.] friend last up has well accounted for this disgraceful offer, and I will account for the refusal of the Eastern States to surrender it.

Mr. Chairman, it is no new thing to you to discover these reasons. It is well known that the Newfoundland fisheries and the Mississippi are balances for one another; that the possession of one tends to the preservation of the other. This accounts for the eastern policy. They thought that, if the Mississippi was given up, the Southern States would give up the right of the fishery, on which their very existence depends. It is not extraordinary, therefore, while these great rights of the fishery depend on such a variety of circumstances,—the issue of war, the success of negotiations, and numerous other causes,—that they should wish to preserve this great counterbalance. What has been their conduct since the peace? When relieved from the apprehensions of losing that great advantage, they are solicitous of securing a superiority of influence in the national councils. They look at the true interest of nations. Their language has been, "Let us prevent any new states from rising in the western world, or they will outvote us—we shall lose our importance, and become as nothing in the scale of nations. If we do not prevent it, our countrymen will remove to those places, instead of going to sea, and we shall receive no particular tribute or advantage from them."

This, sir, has been the language and spirit of their policy, and I suppose ever will be. The Mississippi is not secured under the old Confederation; but it is better secured by that system than by the new Constitution. By the existing system, nine states are necessary to yield it. A few states can give it away by the paper on your table. But I hope it will never be put in the power of a less number than nine states. Jersey, we are told, changed her temper on that great occasion. I believe that that mutability depended on characters. But we have lost another state—Maryland. For, from fortuitous circumstances, those states deviated from their natural character—Jersey in not giving up the right of the Mississippi, and Maryland in giving it up. Whatever be their object, each departed from her natural disposition. It is with great reluctance I have said any thing on the subject, and if I have misrepresented facts, I wish to be corrected.