268 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



"These rights," said the Secretary, by order of the firm and 

 patriotic Madison, " must not be brought into discussion. If insisted 

 on, your negotiation will cease." 



And even after the Convention, a claim was made to run a line 

 from Cape Granby to Cape North, across the whole northeast coast 

 of Cape Breton, not less than one hundred miles, including within 

 the tabooed region, numerous bays and harbours. 



The history of that period of pretension teaches lessons that no 

 independent State, mindful of its own self-respect, or solicitous of 

 the respect of the world, should forget or disregard. Those were the 

 days of impressment, when British officers took whom they pleased 

 from American ships, and when two great belligerents, animated 

 with the spirit of the highwayman, robbed us of our property wher- 

 ever they could find it on the ocean, each alleging as its justification 

 that the other had set the example. Hereafter let us meet the first 

 intentional insult or injury by intentional, I mean one di- 

 159 rected or justified by a foreign Power let us meet it as it should 

 be met, by the armed hand, and by the whole force of the na- 

 tion. Submission and acquiescence will conduct us only to contempt 

 and dishonour. 



We learn from the Report of the Commissioners of 1818 that the 

 important provisions in the present Convention were the result of an 

 ultimatum submitted by them, and which was followed by an ar- 

 rangement. That arrangement was in some respects different from 

 the Treaty of 1783. By that Treaty the American fishermen were 

 acknowledged to have the right to fish on the Grand Banks and all 

 the other banks of Newfoundland, and also in the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence, and at all other places in the sea where the inhabitants of both 

 countries were at any time before used to fish ; and also on the coast 

 of Newfoundland, and on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all the other 

 colonial possessions; and the right to cure and dry fish on all the 

 colonial coasts except Newfoundland. 



The new Convention restricted the right to fish that is. to fish 

 within three marine miles of the coasts to the lines and points 

 enumerated in that instrument, and the right to dry fish on the coast 

 of Labrador, and to a portion of the coast of Newfoundland, which 

 was substituted for a more extended recognition in the original 

 Treaty. 



The consideration on the part of the United States for entering 

 into this Convention, was the amicable arrangement of a perplexing 

 and dangerous question, which, while it was open, was at any time 

 liable to lead to war, and the security of a large portion of the rights 

 claimed by them, which placed this great fishing interest in a pros- 

 perous condition. The consideration on the part of England, was 

 the same permanent establishment of the amicable relations of the 

 two countries, and the relinquishment, by the United States, of some 

 part of what they had previously claimed. Each party, therefore, 

 surrendered something to the other rights and claims arising out of 

 the relations they had previously occupied as portions of one common 

 empire. But their rights as sovereign States, having no reference to 

 previous connexion, were neither touched, nor designed to be touched, 

 by this Convention. We did not ask of England, nor did she ask of 

 us, the privilege of fishing in the ocean, three marine miles from each 

 other's coasts. No treaty was needed for that purpose, nor did either 



