DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 587 



unjustly supposed to be a part, such system is one which the civilised 

 world execrates. 



But seizures of the character of that which I now present to you 

 have no such features. They are made in waters not only conquered 

 and owned by American fishermen, but for the very purpose for 

 which they were being used by Captain Forbes, guaranteed to them 

 by two successive treaties between the United States and Great 

 Britain. These fishermen also, I may be permitted to remind you, 

 were engaged in no nefarious trade. They pursue one of the most 

 useful and meritorious of industries; they gather from the seas, 

 without detriment to others, a food which is nutritious and cheap 

 for the use of an immense population ; they belong to a stock of men 

 which contributed, before the revolution, most essentially to British 

 victories on the North-Eastern Atlantic; and it may not be out of 

 place to say they have shown since that revolution, when serving 

 in the navy of the United States, that they have lost none of their 

 ancient valour, hardihood and devotion to their flag. 



The indemnity which the United States has claimed, and which 

 Great Britain has conceded, for the visitation and search of isolated 

 merchantmen seized on remote African seas on unfounded suspicion 

 of being slavers, it cannot do otherwise now than claim, with a 

 gravity which the importance of the case demands, for its fishermen 

 seized on waters in which they have as much right to traverse for 

 shelter as have vessels by which they are molested. This shelter, 

 it is important to observe, they will, as a class, be debarred from if 

 annoyances such as I now submit to you are permitted to be inflicted 

 on them by minor officials of the British provinces. 



Fishermen, as you are aware, have been considered, from the use- 

 fulness of their occupation, from their simplicity, from the perils 

 to which they are exposed, and from the small quantity of provisions 

 and protective implements they are able to carry with them, the 

 wards of civilised nations, and it is one of the peculiar glories of 

 Great Britain that she has taken the position, a position now gen- 

 erally accepted, that even in time of war, they are not to be the 

 subjects of capture by hostile cruisers. Yet in defence [sic] of 

 this immunity, thus generously awarded by humanity and the laws 

 of nations, the very shelter which they own in these seas, and which 

 is ratified to them by two successive treaties, is to be denied to them, 

 not, I am confident, by the act of the wise, humane and magnanimous 

 Government you represent, but by deputies of deputies permitted 

 to pursue, not uninfluenced by local rivalry, these methods of an- 

 noyance in fishing waters which our fishermen have as much right 

 to visit on lawful errands as those officials have themselves. For 

 let it be remembered that by annoyances and expulsions such as these, 

 the door of shelter is shut to American fishermen as a class. 



If a single refusal of that shelter such as the present be sustained, 

 it is a refusal of shelter to all fishermen pursuing their tasks on those 

 inhospitable coasts. Fishermen have not funds enough, or outfit 

 enough, nor I may add, recklessness enough, to put into harbours 

 where, perfect as is their title, they meet with such treatment as that 



suffered by Captain Forbes. 



351 To sanction such treatment, therefore, is to sanction the re- 



fusal to the United States fishermen as a body of that shelter 



