QUESTION ONE. 17 



certainly deprived of the privileges of ownership over such alien 

 territory and waters. Had the contention of Mr. Adams been sound, 

 the United States with equal justice could have pressed a claim for 

 possession of Quebec or Halifax, for by the " common sword and 

 mingled blood of Americans and Englishmen " those strongholds 

 were won and defended. By the same argument the English could 

 have claimed the right to navigate the Mississippi River, which had 

 been conceded to them by the treaty of 1783, and which Mr. Clay 

 (one of the commissioners at Ghent) declared to be forfeited by the 

 War of 1812. 



Again, had the United States an inherent and natural right to the 

 inshore fisheries of Canada, and to the perpetual use of its shores, 

 why had these shore privileges been limited by the treaty of Paris? 

 Why had the United States accepted the privilege of curing and 

 drying fish in Nova Scotia and Labrador, and relinquished it in New- 

 foundland? If American citizens had been entitled as of right to 

 use a part of the Canadian coast, they were equally entitled to use* 

 all of it. On the Newfoundland coast, where shore privileges were 

 most desired, and where long usage would have set up an easement 

 or prescriptive title fully as well as to the Nova Scotia or Labrador 

 coast, Americans had been denied all landing privileges. 



Furthermore, a review of the instructions of Congress to the com- 

 missioners, who negotiated the treaty of Paris, develops the fact that 

 it had not been the intention or object of the United States Govern- 

 ment to insist upon a continuance of the inshore fisheries which had 

 formerly been enjoyed as a right. Congress did insist on the right 

 to fish on the " Banks of Newfoundland and other fisheries in the 

 American seas, anywhere excepting within the distance of three 

 leagues of the shores of the territory remaining to Great Britain 

 at the close of the war, if a nearer distance cannot be obtained by 

 negotiation." A full expression of the policy of the government in 

 1782 is given in a report of a committee of Congress on certain reso- 

 lutions adopted by the legislature of Massachusetts touching the 

 fisheries (1781). An elaborate argument is there set forth to 

 22 demonstrate the freedom of the high seas, and to prove that 

 the Bank fishery may not be properly appropriated by any 

 power. These Banks, " the nearest point of which is thirty-five 

 leagues distant from Cape Race, are too far advanced in the Atlantic 

 to be a dependence of the shores." Thus a distinction was at that 

 time made between the Bank and the shore fishery. All expressions 

 of Congress signifying a determination to retain the fisheries, at all 

 hazards, refer onty to the open sea fisheries; for at that period of 

 uncertainty it was feared that England might even refuse to yield 

 her pretended sovereignty over the Banks. The spirit of John 

 Adams' instructions in 1782, as gathered from congressional actions 

 previously taken upon the subject, was to insist as a right upon the 

 freedom of the high seas for American fishermen, and to secure for 

 them by negotiation the largest possible inshore privileges. Finally, 

 it will be noted that in the third article of the treaty itself the word 

 " right " is used in connection Avith the Bank and deep sea fishery, 

 and the word ' liberty " with reference to the shore fishery. 



