PEKIOD FROM 1836 TO 1854. 555 



that, damaged in sails and rigging, how were they to reach, through 

 howling winds and roaring waves, the sheltering havens they de- 

 sired? To suppose it, is a mockery; and similar reasoning applies 

 to all the other large bays and gulfs. 



We inserted the clause of renunciation. The British plenipoten- 

 tiaries did not desire it. Without it, room might have been left for 

 the inference that what we got under the convention was a grant 

 to us by Britain: whereas our ground being that, with the exception 

 of share privilege, our fishing rights remained as under the treaty 

 of :83. we could receive nothing which had been agreed upon by the 

 first article, in the light of a concession or favor from her. We took 

 it only as part of a coequal agreement. 



In conformity with our construction, was the practise of Britain 

 after the conversation was ratified. Our fishermen had been waiting 

 for the word not of exclusion, but admission, to those large outer 

 bays. They had been shut out. some of them captured, and all 

 warned away, after the treaty of Ghent. The interval was an anxious 

 and painful one to them. Accordingly as soon as the convention 

 went into operation, they eagerly hastened to their ancient resorts; 

 reinstated by the provident care of their Government. No complaint 

 was made or AYhispered by any member of the British government 

 of that day. of which I ever heard. 



I remained minister at that court seven years after the signing of 

 the convention. Opportunities of complaint were therefore never 

 wanting. If intimated to me, it would have been my duty to trans- 

 mit at once every such communication to our government. Nor 

 did I ever hear of complaint through the British Legation in Wash- 

 ington. It would have been natural to make objections when our 

 misconstruction of the instrument was fresh, if we did misconstrue 

 it. The occasion would have been especially opportune when I was 

 subsequently engaged in extensive negotiations with England in 

 1823—1. which brought under consideration the whole relations, com- 

 mercial and territorial, between the two countries including our entire 

 intercourse by sea ami land, with her North American colonies. Still, 

 silence was never broken in the metropolitan atmosphere of London 

 whilst I remained there. Your letter informs me that for more than 

 twenty years after the convention, there was no serious attempt to 

 exclude US from those large hay-: and Mr. Everett, writing as Secre- 

 tary ol' state, only on i he iih ol' December Last to Mi-. Engersoll, min- 

 ister in England, render- more definite tin- time you whould indicate 

 by Batying, that, " ii was just a emartt r of a <■< ntury after the date of 

 the convention before the first Amerioan fisherman was captured for 

 Gshing at large in the Bay of Fundyl" I find it difficult, under any 

 light-; at present before me. to explain the extraordinary circum- 

 3tancef which environ this international question, consistently with 



all that i- due to the high party on the other side; feeling- the most 



friendly being due to her from the magnitude of the interests hound 

 up in the uli i tence of relations Hie tnosi harmonious at all points 

 between the two countries, and which all ought t<> cherish and boa- 

 prove. 



It is impossible for me to doubt that the ((invention a- //•' now 

 construe it. and have ahoays construed it, was entirely acceptable to 

 the British government at the tmm of Us adoption. But I remember 



also that other feeling! were afloat at that epoch heyond the pale of 



