BRITISH, COLONIAL AND OTHER CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 511 



Now, then, with regard to the Treaty relations between His Maj- 

 esty's Government and the Government of the United States of 

 America. 



Before the American Revolution the inhabitants of all the British 

 Colonies in North America possessed, as a common right, the right 

 of fishing on all the coasts of what was then British North America, 

 and these rights were, in the broadest sense, prescriptive and accus- 

 tomed rights of property. At the end of the Revolution, and by the 

 Treaty of Peace signed in 1883, the boundaries between the posses- 

 sions of the two Powers, that is to say, the United States and Great 

 Britain, were adjusted by Article III. of that Treaty, which reads 

 as follows: 



"Agreed, that the people of the United States shall continue to 

 enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand 

 Bank, and on all the other banks of Newfoundland ; also in the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea, where the inhab- 

 itants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish, and also 

 that the inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty to take 

 fish of every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as 

 British fishermen shall use (but not to dry or cure the same on that 

 island), and also on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of His 

 Britannic Majesty's Dominions in America." 



This was a grant or recognition of a right agreed upon for a con- 

 sideration viz., the adjustment of the boundaries and other engage- 

 ments into which the United States by that Treaty entered. 



For our purpose, it is unnecessary to deal with the other articles of 

 that Treaty. 



From 1783, until the war between Great Britain and the United 

 States in 1812, citizens of the United States continued to enjoy the 

 ancient rights belonging to them as subjects of Great Britain before 

 the Revolution, and reserved to them as citizens of the United States, 

 to the extent outlined in the article of the Treaty of 1783, to which I 

 have referred. Between those dates, other subjects of difference and 

 negotiation, apart from the fisheries, arose between the two nations, 

 which were disposed of by the Treaties of 1794 and 1802, but the 

 fishery provisions of 1783 continued down to the period of the out- 

 break of war in 1812. 



At the close of that war a Treaty of Peace was concluded on the 

 24th of December, 1814, which provided : 



(1) For the restoration to each party of all countries, territories, 

 &c., taken by either party during the war, without delay, save some 

 questions of islands in the Bay of Passamaquoddy ; 



(2) For disposition of prizes and prisoners of war; and 



(3) For questions of boundary and dominion regarding certain 

 islands and for the settlement of the north-eastern boundary, and 

 also for the north-western boundary, but it made no reference what- 

 ever to any question touching the fisheries referred to in the Treaty 

 of 1783. 



On the 3rd of July 1815, Great Britain entered into a Commercial 

 Treaty with the United States, which provided for reciprocal liberty 

 of commerce between all the territories of Great Britain in Europe 

 and the territories of the United States but made no stipulation as 



