174 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



to sign and seal the treaties, which the secretaries were to copy fair 

 in the meantime. 



I forgot to mention that when we were upon the fishery and Mr. 

 Strachey and Mr. Fitzherbert were urging us to leave out the word 

 right and substitute liberty, I told them at last, in answer to their 

 proposal to agree upon all other articles and leave that of the fishery 

 to be adjusted at the definitive treaty, I said I never could put my 

 hand to any articles without satisfaction about the fishery; that 

 Congress had, three or four years ago, when they did me the honor 

 to give me a commission to make a treaty of commerce with Great 

 Britain, given me a positive instruction not to make any such treaty 

 without an article in the treaty of peace acknowledging our right to 

 the fishery; that I was happy Mr. Laurens was now present, who, I 

 believed, was in Congress at the time and must remember it. Mr. 

 Laurens, upon this, said with great firmness, that he was in the same 

 case, and could never give his voice for any articles without this. 

 Mr. Jay spoke up. and said it could not be a peace, it would only be 

 an insidious truce without it. 



105 No. 109. 1856: Extract from Mr. 0. F. Adams' book on the 



above. 



The conferences were resumed on the 25th of November, and Mr. 

 Strachey appeared once more. His tone was apparently but little 

 changed. The ministry, he . said, continued dissatisfied with the 

 refusal of a provision for the Tories, and they required modifications 

 of the article on the fisheries. On the boundaries alone were they 

 disposed to concede. But discouraging as this announcement seemed, 

 it was actually more than compensated by the introduction of Mr. 

 Fitzherbert, to whom the negotiation with France had already been 

 intrusted, as an assistant to Mr. Oswald. The discussions which 

 ensued for the next four days, were long, animated, and often ve- 

 hement. The great struggle was upon the fisheries. Great Britain 

 was willing to concede the use on the high seas as a privilege, whilst 

 she denied it altogether within its three miles' jurisdiction on the 

 coasts. America, on the other hand, claimed the former as a right, 

 and asked for the privilege of the latter. Here was the place at 

 which Mr. Adams assumed the greatest share of responsibility in the 

 negotiation. He insisted upon placing the two countries exactly on 

 a level in regard to the right to the fishery, a claim, the justice of 

 which few, at this day, would be found to dispute. The energy and 

 effect of his representations, on this point, are so well shown in his 

 " Diarv " as to render it unnecessary to dwell further on them here. 

 He further claimed for his countrymen a liberty to dry and cure 

 fish on the unsettled regions of British America, and a privilege of 

 the same kind in the settled parts, with the consent of the proprietors. 



These propositions he put in writing in a paper which, on the 29th, 

 he proposed to the conference as an article to be inserted in the 

 treaty. 



