PERTAINING TO NEGOTIATION OP TREATY OF 1818. 285 



The undersigned is apprehensive, from the earnestness with which 

 Lord Bathurst's note argues to refute inferences which he disclaims, 

 from the principles asserted in his letter to his lordship, that he has 

 not expressed his meaning in terms sufficiently clear. He affirmed 

 that previous to the independence of the United States, their people, 

 as British subjects, had enjoyed all the rights and liberties in the 

 fisheries, which form the subject of the present discussion ; and that, 

 when the separation of the two parts of the nation was consummated, 

 by a mutual compact, the treaty of peace defined the rights and lib- 

 erties which, by the stipulation of both parties, the United States, 

 in their new character, were to enjoy. By the acknowledgment of 

 the independence of the United States, Great Britain bound herself 

 to treat them, thenceforward, as a nation possessed of all the pre- 

 rogatives and attributes of sovereign power. The people of the 

 United States were, thenceforward, neither bound in allegiance to 

 the sovereign of Great Britain, nor entitled to his protection, in 

 the enjoyment of any of their rights, as his subjects. Their rights 

 and their duties, as members of a state, were defined and regulated 

 by their own constitutions and forms of government. But there were 

 certain rights and liberties which had been enjoyed by both parts 

 of the nation, while subjects of the same sovereign, which it was 

 mutually agreed they should continue to enjoy unmolested, and among 

 them, were the rights and liberties in these fisheries. The fisheries 

 on the Banks of Newfoundland, as well in the open seas as in the 

 neighboring bays, gulfs, and along the coasts of Nova Scotia and 

 Labrador, were, by the dispensations and the laws of nature, in sub- 

 stance, only different parts of one fishery. Those of the open sea 

 were enjoyed not as a common and universal right of all nations; 

 since the exclusion from them of France and Spain, in whole or in 

 part, had been expressly stipulated by those nations, and no other 

 nation, had. in fact, participated in them. It was, with some excep- 

 tions, an exclusive possession of the British nation; and in the treaty 

 of separation it was agreed that the rights and liberties in them 

 should continue to be enjoyed by that part of the nation which con- 

 stituted the United States; that it should not be a several, but, as 

 between Great Britain and the United States, a common fishery. It 

 was necessary, for the enjoyment of this fishery, to exercise it in con- 

 formity to the habits of the species of game of which it consisted. 

 The places frequented by the fish were those to which the fishermen 

 were obliged to resort, and these occasionally brought them to the 

 borders of the British territorial jurisdiction. It was also necessary, 

 for the prosecution of a part of this fishery, that (lie fish, when 

 caught, mould be immediately cured ami dried, which could only be 

 done on the rocks or shores adjoining the places where they were 

 caught; the access to these rocks and shores, for those purposes, was 

 secured to the people of the United States, as incidental and neces- 

 ary to the enjoyment of the li hery; it was little more than an access 

 to naked rocks and desolate and ; but it was as permanently secured 

 as the right to the fishery it self. No limit at ion was assigned of time. 

 Provision was made for the proprietary rights which might at a dis- 

 tant and future period arise by the settlement of places then unin- 

 habited; but no other limitation was ezpre ed or indicated by the 



