132 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



matter ; that fishing on the high seas is res nullius, and that the fish- 

 ing off the coasts belonged by rights to the proprietors of the coasts, 

 except in the case of limitations founded on conventions. 



No. 88. 1782, November 2-5: Extracts from Mr. Adams' 1 Diary. 



November .... 2. Saturday .... Almost every moment of this 

 week has been employed in negotiation with the English gentlemen 

 concerning peace. We have made two propositions; one the line of 

 forty-five degrees; the other, a line through the middle of the lakes. 

 And for the bound between Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, a line 

 from the mouth of Saint Croix to its source, and from its source to 

 the Highlands. 



3. Sunday. In my first conversation with Franklin, on Tuesday 

 evening last, he told me of Mr. Oswald's demand of the payment of 

 debts and compensation to the Tories. He said that their answer had 

 been, that we had not power, nor had Congress. I told him I had no 

 notion of cheating anybody. The question of paying debts, and that 

 of compensating Tories, were two. I had made the same observation 

 that forenoon to Mr. Oswald and Mr. Strachey, in company with Mr. 

 Jay, at his house. I saw it struck Mr. Strachey with peculiar pleas- 

 ure ; I saw it instantly smiling in every line of his face ; Mr. Oswald 

 was apparently pleased with it too. In a subsequent conversation 

 with my colleagues, I proposed to them that we should agree, that 

 Congress should recommend it to the States to open their courts of 

 justice for the recovery of all just debts. They gradually fell into 

 this opinion, and we all expressed these sentiments to the English 

 gentlemen, who were much pleased with it ; and with reason, because 

 it silences the clamors of all the British creditors against the peace, 

 and prevents them from making common cause with the refugees. 



Mr. Jay came in and spent two hours in conversation upon our 

 affairs, and we attempted an answer to Mr. Oswald's letter. He is 

 perfectly of my opinion, or I am of his, respecting Mr. Dana's true 

 line of conduct, as well as his with Spain, and ours with France, 

 Spain, and England. 



.... Vergennes has endeavored to persuade him to treat with 

 D'Aranda without exchanging powers; he refuses. Vergennes also 

 pronounced Oswald's first commission sufficient, and was for making 

 the acknowledgment of American independence the first article of the 

 treaty. Jay would not treat; the consequence was a complete ac- 

 knowledgment of our independence by Oswald's new commission 

 under the great seal of Great Britain, to treat with the commissioners 

 of the United States of America. Thus a temperate firmness has suc- 

 ceeded everywhere, but the base system nowhere 



4. Monday. Called on Jay, and went to Oswald's, and spent with 

 him and Strachey, from eleven to three, in drawing up the articles 

 respecting debts, and tories, and fishery. I drew up the article anew 

 in this form. 



That the subjects of His Britannic Majesty, and the people of the said United 

 States, shall continue to enjoy unmolested, the right to take fish of every kind, 

 on all the Banks of Newfoundland, in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and all other 

 places, where the inhabitants of both countries used, at any time heretofore, to 



