WAR AND ITS RESULTS 125 



Neither can it be learned how many lost their lives in 

 the war. The pecuniary losses resulting from the decay of 

 idle vessel property, wharves and fishing apparatus must 

 have amounted to several hundred thousand dollars. The 

 only measure for estimating the loss of the products of 

 the annual catch of fish is the value of the catch at the 

 opening of the war multiplied by the number of years that 

 active hostilities continued. Even then the estimate may 

 be low, as the fisheries could not recover immediately 

 upon the declaration of peace. Had the New England 

 fisherman been unmolested in the pursuit of his calling 

 during the period of the war, he would have secured fifteen 

 million dollars worth of fish from the sea. 



"The fisheries and the Mississippi' were the two im- 

 portant questions which entered into the peace negotiations 

 of 1783. The statesmen of the Continental Congress ex- 

 pected that England, when negotiating for a peace, would 

 exclude the United States from the fisheries of the banks 

 of Newfoundland and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Their 

 grounds for such a belief rested on the exclusive right of 

 fishing which England held as successor to the claim 

 exercised by France previous to the treaty of 1763, and to 

 the policy that she had followed under the terms of that 

 treaty of excluding the French from approaching nearer 

 than three leagues to the shores of the Gulf of Saint 

 Lawrence and fifteen leagues on the coast of Cape Breton 

 Island. Important as the fisheries were to the colonists, 

 the members of the Congress did not make the right to the 

 fisheries an ultimatum in their instructions to John Adams, 

 August 14, 1779. His instructions on that question were 

 as follows: 



"Although it is of the utmost importance to the peace and 

 commerce of the United States that Canada and Nova Scotia 

 should be ceded, and more particularly that their equal common 



