300 



policy of granting permissioh to the fisheries of the United States to fish 

 in the Bay of Ch;ileur, and other hirge bays of a similar character on 

 tJie coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; and, apprehending from 

 your statements that any such general concession would be injurious to 

 the interests of the British North American provinces, we have aban- 

 doned the intention we entertained upon the subject, and still adhere to 

 tJie strict letter of the treaties which exist between Great Britain and 

 Uie United States, relative to the fisheries in North America, except so 

 far as they may relate to the Bay of Fundy, which has been thrown 

 open to the North Americans under certain restrictions." 



There are fish enough in the American seas for all who speak the 

 Saxon tongue — for all of the Saxon stock. England, we may hope, 

 will not maintain a position so likely to produce troubles like those of 

 olden time which existed between us, as colonists, and the French, 

 and of which I have elsewhere spoken. Fishermen are but poor 

 interpreters of international law and of unreal and fictitious distinc- 

 tions. To them, the open sea, the great "bays," are but one — but a 

 continuous fishing ground; and few of them, I apprehend, will ever 

 see or respect the lines which colonial ingenuity has "drawn from 

 headland to headland" of these "baj's." 



I conclude the topic with expressing the conviction — to which all 

 practical men wall assent — that, if the new construction of the conven- 

 tion of 181S be persisted in and actually enforced, we shall lose quite 

 one-third of our cod and mackerel fisheries. Let not our colonial 

 brethren press us too far. Self-concjuest is the noblest of all victories ; 

 and, in all kindness, let them be urged to subdue their hatred of "the 

 Yankees." The children of the whigs of a former day demand free 

 access to all the seas of British America. They require the use of 

 every sheet of sea-water six miles wide jill around the colonial coasts — 

 not by courtesy, but as a matter of right; and they will be satisfied 

 with nothing less. The attempt to exclude them has already caused 

 much unneighborly feeling, and, if continued, will occasion wrangling 

 and quarrelling on the fishing grounds. The end, no one is wise 

 enough to foresee. 



The colonists have toiled a whole generation to move the British 

 government to "protect them from the aggressions of the Americans." 

 They have apparently, and for the moment, accomplished their object. 

 But will ihey themselves catch a fish the more, or become a single 

 guinea the richer, in consequence of the opinion of the crown lawyers 

 and of Lord Stanley's two despatches? They have achicn^ed a state- 

 paper victory, at the expense of right and of humanity. Some of our 

 countrymen have neither the money nor the credit to procure and fit 

 out the class of vessels re(juired in the Newfoundland and Labrador 

 fisheries, and are compelled by the necessities of their position and 

 condiion to resort, in the smrdler craft, to the coasts of New Brunswick 

 and Nova Scotia to earn subsistence. Exclusion to such, is a great 

 wrong. Nay, it is a wrong to colonists themselves, and to hungry and 

 starving women and children, whom they always meet on particular 

 parts of the colonial coasts when making their "spring fare," and 

 whose necessities they seldom refuse to relieve, even to their own 



