249 



is of value. On the other hand, it would be less injurious to the 

 general trade and fishery of this Island, and I believe, to the 

 general interest of the British Fisheries in these seas, if extreme 

 as the alternative may appear to those at a distance British sub- 

 jects were absolutely prevented from fishing at all on the West Coast, 

 or occupying fishing stations there, during the season in which the 

 French are entitled to resort to it, than to concede to the latter the 

 further privileges contemplated in Sir A. Perrier's proposals. But 

 the course I have alluded to could not now be adopted without con- 

 siderable difficulty, nor without indemnifying those British subjects 

 whose existing rights would be abrogated. 



22. In conclusion, in submitting the foregoing observations to Your 

 Grace; which I have done with the freedom necessary for Your 

 Grace's information; I am sensible that I have not suggested what 

 is in consonance with all the views expressed in the letter of the 

 Under Secretary of State of the Department of Foreign Affairs to 

 the Under Secretary of State of the Colonial Department, accom- 

 panying Your Grace's Despatch to myself. But it has been my duty 

 irankly to state to Your Grace the public sentiment here, as well as 

 my own views and opinions, upon the points to which my attention 

 has been called. A review of the whole of the facts of the case will 

 show, that if the merits of the causes of complaint on both sides are 

 fairly weighed, the French are in the enjoyment of privileges which 

 are not supported by the terms of the Treaties; that, in reality, it 

 is British subjects, and not the French, who have ground to com- 

 plain of the infraction of the Treaties; and, that the duty of recip- 

 rocal respect on the part of the French for the terms of the Treaties, 

 some of the provisions of which concede to them privileges, in fact, 

 detriment to the principle of the Sovereignty of the Territory of 

 this Colony, needs to be insisted upon. The recent, and I believe, I 

 may add premeditated, act of aggression on the part of the French 

 at St. George's Bay to which I called Your Grace's attention in 

 my Despatch No. 60 of the 3rd instant, will, as it appears to me, 

 impose on Her Majesty's Government the necessity of declaring once 

 more the inadmissability of the French claim to an exclusive Fishery, 

 as the Treaties now stand. The principle involved in such a re- 

 monstrance will apply within the entire district assigned for the 

 French Fishery. Consequently a revision of the subsisting engage- 

 ments between England and France, on the basis suggested in the 

 18th, and referred to at the commencement of the preceding para- 

 graph of this Despatch, will include a concession of solid advantage 

 to the French a concession indeed which, in the opinion of the 

 Council and the Colony, is too large. But our scrupulousness in 

 abstaining for a series of years from exercising on parts of the Coast 

 rights from which we are not debarred by Treaty, in order that the 

 French might by this means have the more beneficial enjoyment of 

 their privileges, cannot in reason be urged as an argument why we 

 should make still further concessions. 

 I have, etc., 



(Signed) KER B. HAMILTON. 



His Grace the DUKE or NEWCASTLE, etc., etc., etc. 



P. S. I append a copy of a Document and Sketch, remaining in 

 the Government Office, relative to the boundary between the British 



