234 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC., PRIOR TO TREATY OF 1818 



suit of, agree and conclude with any Commissioner or Commissioners 

 named or to be named by certain Colonies or Plantations in America, 

 therein specified a Peace or Truce with the said Colonies or Planta- 

 tions, Our Will and Pleasure is, that you insert a Clause in the said 

 Bill revoking and determining our said Commission and Letter"? 

 Patent and all and every Power. Article and Thing therein con- 

 tained. And for so doing this shall be your Warrant. Given at 

 Our Court at St. James's the 19 th day of September 1782; in the 22 nd 

 year of our Reign. 



By His Majesty's Command 



TO or ¥oltk or n General } ' T ' Townshend. 



Mr. Oswald to Mr. T. Townshend. 



Paris, November 30, 1782. 



Sir: I take this opportunity of Mr. Strachey to acknowledge the 

 honor of your letters of the 22d and 23d (19th and 22d) instant and 

 to advise that we have at last come to an agreement with the American 

 commissioners as to the terms of the treaty. 



They are not exactly what were proposed by the draft which Mr. 

 Strachey brought over with him, but are the best we could possibly 

 obtain of them. 



If we had not given way in the article of the fishery, we should 

 have had no treaty at all. Mr. Adams having declared that he would 

 never put his hand to any treaty, if the restraints regarding the three 

 leagues and fifteen leagues were not dispensed with, as well as that 

 denying his countrymen the privilege of drying fish on the unsettled 

 parts of Nova Scotia. 



Mr. Fitzherbert and Mr. Strachey finding this, and there being a 

 discretionary power in Mr. Strachey's instructions regarding the 

 whole of this article, as well in extent as manner, they thought it 

 advisable to avail themselves of it rather than send again to London 

 on this critical occasion, for farther instructions. Which although 

 in the most certain prospect of obtaining assent to such dispensation 

 might have been of bad consequence, not only in the loss of so much 

 time, but in leaving the commissioners in such humor, as in the 

 interim, to have suggested some new demands under the head of one 

 or more of the other articles, which might have been of worse con- 

 sequence than that of giving up these restraints of fishery. One 

 specimen of which we had yesterday, while sitting with them and 

 under hesitation on this subject, when one of those gentlemen, pulling 

 a paper out of his pocket, proposed that his majesty should recom- 

 mend to his parliament, to make provision for the payment of certain 

 effects which had been seized by order of his generals and entirely out 

 of the line of the consequences of military irregularities, and such as 

 they could bring undoubted proofs of. And which he said ought to 

 be paid upon the same principles of justice, as was urged in favor of 

 the recovery of debts. On these and other accounts, and being in a 

 manner certain that without an indulgence in this article of fishery, 

 there would have been no treaty with America, the above-mentioned 

 gentlemen thought it best to close with the commissioners by admit- 



