CHAr. XXXV. FEEXCH RIGHT OF FISHEET. 223 



stations within the above limits, practically converted the con- 

 current fishery into one exclusively French, and the colony was 

 thus, by the act of the parent state, deprived of the fairest por- 

 tion of its fishery grounds. The consequences of this act, how- 

 ever, were not immediately felt. The operation of the Treaty 

 being suspended by the wars which shortly followed, the British 

 fisheries prospered, and in the year 1815 not fewer than 400 

 sail of British ships, of which a very large proportion were fitted 

 out from St. John's and the adjacent ports, fished upon the 

 Banks, and not fewer than 100,000 quintals of fish were ex- 

 ported by British subjects to France alone. After the peace of 

 1815 the French resorted to the Banks and to the coast of 

 Newfoundland in great numbers, and, being supported by enor- 

 mous bounties, the quantity of British-caught fish rapidly 

 lessened, and its prices in foreign and colonial markets fell. 

 The British and Colonial Bank fishery consequently declined, 

 and in 1845 became extinct; and the fishery on our eastern 

 shore, once so productive, was so much injured by the French 

 Bank fishery, that the greater part of those engaged in it have 

 of late years been obliged to fish at the Labrador, or on the 

 south coast of the island. At present, therefore, excluded by 

 force from the fishery between Cape Eay and Cape St. John, 

 and driven from the Banks by French bounties, we have but 

 two cod fisheries that are of any importance to us — that carried 

 on on our south coast from Cape Eace westward, and known as 

 the Western Fishery, and that carried on at the Labrador, be- 

 tween Blanc Sablon and Cape Harrison ; and it is these that the 

 terms of the present convention will principally affect. 



The first article of the convention that materially alters our 

 existing rights, is the third, which gives to the French a con- 

 current right of fishery with British subjects on the Labrador 

 coast, between Blanc Sablon and Cape Charles, with the right 

 also of occupying Belle Isle North for fishery purposes, and of 

 fishing in its neighbourhood. 



The effects of this concession, it may be shortly stated, will 

 be the total loss to British subjects of the fishery between Blanc 

 Sablon and Cape Charles, and round Belle Isle, the sacrifice of 

 the British establishments in the Straits, and certain and increas- 



