141 



Mr. Dunning opposed the bill. He thought that the Americans had 

 a right to fish on the Banks of Newfoundland ; that there was no re- 

 bellion in Massachusetts Bay, and nothing there that could be con- 

 strued into treason ; that, if even there was a rebellion in some parts, the 

 whoh should not be punished; and why, he asked, punish New Hamp- 

 shire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut? " The ministers," he added, 

 *' Were the best authors of a receipt to malx rebellion." 



Mr. Attorney General Thurlow followed in reply. In his judgment 

 tiiere ims a rebellion in Massachusetts. 



Governor Johnstone said that the measure was absurd and cruel; that 

 the God of nature had given these fisheries to New and not to Old Eng- 

 land, and the proposition to starve a whole people, except such as the 

 governor should think proper to favor, was inhuman ; and that this 

 partial permission would give rise to unjust preference, monopoly, and 

 all sorts of jobs. He declared, further, that he had served in the navy 

 during the entire period of the last war, and that it was a constant rule 

 in the service for the British cruisers on the enemy's coast to spare the 

 fishing craft, thinking it savage and barbarous to deprive the poor 

 fishermen of their little means of livelihood, and the miserable inhabit- 

 ants of the seacoast of their daily food. 



Sir George Saville exposed the folly of depriving one province of its 

 subsistence because rebellion, we knew not where nor by whom, is 

 lurking in it ; and then punishing a second province because it is next 

 door to rebelhon ; a third, because ministers would accomplish nothing 

 if a third were allowed to escape ; and a fourth, because otherwise the 

 authors of the scheme could not square their plan. 



Sir W. Meredith supported the bill. He indulged in terms of severe 

 reprobation of the spirit which continued to prevail in the colonies; 

 and concluded with declaring, that whatever distress might be occa- 

 sioned by suspending the fisheries, the Americans would have no cause 

 to cotnplain, since they had commenced the same course of conduct, 

 and had resolved, as far as was in their power, to ruin British mer»- 

 chants and manufacturers, and to starve all the West India islands. 



Lord Beauchamp and Sir Richard Sutton defended the ministry on 

 similar grounds, and because the colonists had prohibited trade with 

 the mother country. 



Mr. Burke was extremely severe in the course of his attack upon the 

 bill, and remarked that the ministers had disposed of four of their pro- 

 vinces ; some for concealed rebellion, others for concealers of the 

 concealment ; some for infection, and others for being next door to 

 infection. But, said he, there is a fifth province which is as likely to 

 suffer as any of the four, and that province is England, which has seve- 

 ral hundreds of thousands of her property in the four provinces of New 

 England ; and, as these can only pay their debts bv means of the 

 fisher.es, and the trades that depend upon them, the effect of the pas- 

 sage of the bill will be to beggar the English merchants and manufac- 

 turers. 



Lord North's motion was, however, agreed to — two hundred and 

 sixty one members voting in favor, and but eighty-five against it. 



On the 2Sth of Februar}^ the bill was taken up, and several persons 

 acquainted with the fisheries were examined as to their value, and the 

 probable results of suspending them. Mr. David Barcley appeared to 



