with which she then proceeds immediately to Europe, or returns 

 to the United States ; and this fish, thus caught and cured, is es 

 teemed the best that is brought to market, and ibr several years pre 

 vious to that of 1808, was computed to furnish three fourth parts of 

 all the dried fish exported trom the United States. This fishery 

 was also about that time taking a new form, which would have had 

 a double advantage, both in point of profit and extension ; for some 

 of our merchants were beginning to send their large vessels to the 

 Labrador Coast, and its vicinity, to receive there, from small fishing 

 boats they employed or purchased from, cured fish, to load their 

 vessels with immediately for Europe, thus saving so great an ex 

 pense in getting the fish to market abroad, as would in a short tiirn* 

 have given our merchants a command of the European markets, 

 and would have also afforded an encouragement to a small but very 

 numerous boat fishery, which, from receiving the pay for their la?- 

 hour on the spot, could not fail to have been greatly excited and in 

 creased, and enabling the persons concerned in the exportation 

 from the coast, to receive at home the proceeds of their adventures 

 from abroad, about as early as the bank fish could have been put 

 into a state fit to he exported from the United States ; in addition to 

 which, we were prosecuting a very productive salmon and inacka- 

 rel fishery, in the same vicinity, as most of the pickled fish we had 

 received for some years prior to the war were caught on those 

 shores. 



&quot; This Coast Fishery, then, most highly important and invaluable 

 as I think it must be admitted to be, even from the foregoing hasty and 

 imperfect sketch of it, merits every possible degree of attention and 

 effort for its preservation on the part of the government of the 

 United States. The refusal of the British commissioners to re 

 new or recognise the stipulation of the treaty of 1783, respecting 

 it, and the notification, I hope not formally given, that it would not 

 hereafter be permitted without an equivalent, are alarming indica 

 tions in reference to the future peaceable prosecution of this fish 

 ery, and of the dispositions of the British government with regard 

 to it. 



&quot; The difference of expression used in the third article of the 

 treaty of peace of 1783, as to the right of fishing on the Banks of 

 Newfoundland, and the liberty of fishing on the coasts of the Bri 

 tish provinces in North America, however it might have originated, 

 affords a diversity of expression which, in the present instance, 

 will be seized, and be made to give the partizans of Great Britain 

 and of the provinces a popular colour of justice in support of their 

 arguments, when they contend, as I think they probably will do, 

 that in so important a compact the variance of language could not 

 have been a matter of accident ; that if precision in the use of 

 terms in their most literal sense is any where to be expected, it is 

 rertainly to be looked for in an instrument which is to form the 

 paramount law between two nations, whose clashing interests have 

 brought them into collision ^ and which is generally framed by men 



