JOS 



and, above all, it another mind could have been found in the mis 

 sion, capable of concurring with him in those views, it would at 

 least have required of the majority an inflexibility of fortitude, 

 beyond that of any trial by which they were visited, to have per 

 severed in their proposal. Had they concurred with him in his 

 opinion of the total abrogation of the treaty of 1783, by the mere 

 fact of the war, the fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the 

 coast of Labrador, and to an indefinite extent from the Island of 

 Newfoundland, were lost to the United States forever, or at least 

 till the indignant energy of the nation should have recovered, by 

 conquest, the rights thus surrendered to usurpation. In notifying 

 to us that the British government intended not to renew the grant 

 of the fisheries within British jurisdiction, they had not said what 

 extent they meant to give to these terms. They had said they did 

 not mean to extend it to the right of the fisheries, generally, or in 

 the open seas, enjoyed by all other nations. (See Letter of the Ame 

 rican Commissioners to the Secretary of Stale of 12th August, 1814. 

 Waifs State Papers, vol. 9, p. 321.) But there was not wanting his 

 torical exposition of what Great Britain undeistood by her exclu 

 sive jurisdiction as applied to these fisheries. In the 12th article 

 of the treaty of Utrecht, by which Nova Scotia or Acadia had been 

 ceded by France to Great Britain, the cession had been made &quot; in 

 &quot; such ample manner and form, that the subjects of the most 

 &quot; Christian King shall hereafter be excluded from all kind of fish- 

 &quot; ing in the said seas, bays, and other places on the coasts of Nova 

 lk Scotia ; that is to say, on those which lie towards the east, within 

 * THIRTY LEAGUES, beginning from the island commonly called 

 41 Sable, inclusively, and thence along towards the southwest.&quot; 



By the thirteenth article of the same treaty, French subjects 

 were excluded from fishing on any other part of the coast of the 

 Island of Newfoundland, then from Cape Bonavista northward, and 

 then westward to Point Riche. By the fifteenth article of the treaty 

 of Utrecht, between Great Britain and Spain, certain rights of fish- 

 tng at the Island of Newfoundland, had been reserved to the Gui- 

 puscoans, and other subjects of Spain ; but in the eighteenth article 

 of the treaty of peace between Great Britain and Spain, of 1763, 

 his Catholic majesty had desisted, &quot;as well for himself as lor his 

 successors, from nil pretension which he might have formed in fa 

 vour of the Guipuscoans and oilier his subjects, to the right of 

 fishing IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD of the Island of Newfoundland. * 

 In these several cases, it is apparent that Great Britain had assert 

 ed and maintained an exclusive and proprietary jurisdiction over 

 the whole fishing grounds of the Grand Bank, as well as on the 

 coast of North America, and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Nor 

 are we without subsequent indications of what she would have 

 considered as her exclusive jurisdiction, if a majority of the Ame 

 rican commission at Ghent had been as ready as Mr. Russell de 

 clares himself to have been, to subscribe to her doctrine, that all 

 aur fishing liberties had lost, by the war, every vestige of right. 



