HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



Mr. Adams replied, ' By no means, but it appeared unaccountable to the- people of America that 

 this country should sacrifice the general interests of the nation to the private interests of a few 

 individuals interested iu the manufacture of ships and iu the whale fishery, so far as to refuse 

 these remittances from America iu payment of debts, and for manufactures which would employ 

 so many more people, augment the revenue so considerably, as well as the national wealth, which 

 would, even in other ways, so much augment the shipping and seamen of the nation. It was 

 looked upon iu America as reconciling themselves to a diminution of their own shipping and sea- 

 men, in a great degree, for the sake of diminishing ours in a small one, besides keeping many of 

 their manufacturers out of employ, who would otherwise have enough to do; and besides greatly 

 diminish the revenue, and, consequently, contrary to the maxim which he had just acknowledged 

 that one nation should not hurt itself for the sake of hurting another, nor take measures to 

 deprive another of any advantage without benefiting itself.'* From the questions of compara- 

 tive gains or losses to either power, and the relations in which France would stand to both, Mr. 

 Pitt led Mr. Adams into a lengthy and useless conversation on the whale fisheries of the three 

 countries, referring specially to the efforts of M. de Calonne to introduce this pursuit into France, 

 asking suddenly the question ' whether we had taken any measures to find a market for our oil 

 anywhere but in France.' To this Mr. Adams replied, 'I believed we had, and I have been told 

 that some of our oil had found a good market at Bremen; but there could not be a doubt that 

 spermaceti oil might find a market in most of the great cities in Europe which were illuminated 

 iu the night, as it is so much better and cheaper than the vegetable oil that is commonly used. 

 The fat of the spermaceti whale gives the clearest and most beautiful flame of auy substance that 

 is known in nature, and we are all surprised that you prefer darkness, and consequent robberies, 

 burglaries, and murders in your streets to the receiving, as a remittance, our spermaceti oil. 

 The lamps around Grosveuor Square, I know, and iu Downing street, too, I suppose, are dim by 

 midnight, and extinguished by two o'clock ; whereas our oil would burn bright till 9 o'clock in the 

 morning, and chase away, before the watchmen, all the villains, and save you the trouble and 

 danger of introducing a new police into the city.'t 



" But despite the fact that Mr. Pitt appeared more favorable than was anticipated, Mr. Adams 

 did not expect any immediate response to his propositions. The English ministers in their 

 individual capacity seemed singularly timorous, and manifested much fear of committing them- 

 selves before joint cabinet action. Adams inclined to the opinion that nothing short of the con- 

 vincing eloquence of dire necessity would drive the English ministry from the positions they had 

 assumed in regard to the navigation act, and that an answer to his propositions, even at a late 

 day, was doubtful, without Congress authorized similar acts with the United States, and these 

 counter-irritants were actually put in force, to determine on which side the inconvenience was 

 greatest. The great cry in the United Kingdom was, ' Shall the United States be our ship- 

 carpenters ? Shall we depend upon a foreign nation for our navigation ? In case of a war with 

 them, shall we be without ships, or obliged to our enemies for them ?' How much this nightmare 

 of inability to cope with their late colonies in anything like a fair field was stimulated by the 

 Government is uncertain, but the authorities evidently used no efforts to allay it.f 



"5th Richard, ii, ch. 3." "t Works of Johu Adams, viii, pp. 308-309." 



" { In negotiation with the Portuguese ministers in November, 1875, Mr. Adams asked (viii, p. 340) if they did not 

 want our sperm oil. lie replied that they had olives and made oil from them; they had no use lor their own sperm 

 oil and sold it to Spain. -They had now,' hi; said, u, very pretty spermaceti -whale fishery, which they had learned 

 of the New Euglaiidcrs, and carried on upon the coast of Brazil.' According to the Boston News-Letter of April, 21, 

 1774, the method of obtaining their knowledge was somewhat open to objections. In 1805 the Portuguese attempted 

 to carry on the whaling business from Mozambique, and Timothy Folger, Francis Paddack, William Hull, and John 

 Hillmau, of Nautucket, \vcnf thereto take charge of the fishery; but early in 1810 accounts were received at Nan- 

 tucket stating that they had all been taken sick anil died I here." 



