DOCUMENTS BEARING ON TREATY OP 1783. 177 



December 6 He [Laurens] says there will be an outrageous 



clamour in England, on account of the fisheries and the loyalists; 

 but what is done is irrevocable. 



No. 112. 1782, November 30: Letter, Mr. Oswald to Mr. Townshend. 



PARIS, November 30, 1782. 



SIR. I take this opportunity of Mr. Strachey to acknowledge the 

 honour of your letters of the 22nd and 23rd instant, and to advise 

 that we have at last come to an agreement with the American Com- 

 missioners as to the terms of the treaty. They are not exactly what 

 were proposed by the draft which Mr. Strachey brought over with 

 him ; but are the best we could possibly obtain of them. 



If we had not given way in the article of the fishery, we should 

 have had no treaty at all, Mr. Adams having declared that he never 

 would put his hand to any treaty, if the restraints regarding the 3 

 leagues and 15 leagues were not dispensed with, as well as that of 

 denying his countrymen the privilege of drying fish on the unsettled 

 parts of Nova Scotia. 



Mr. Fitzherbert and Mr. Strachey finding this, and there being a 

 discretionary power in Mr. Strachey s instructions regarding 

 107 the whole of this article, as well in extent as manner, they 

 thought it advisable to avail themselves of it, rather than send 

 again to London on this critical occasion, for further instructions, 

 which, although in the almost certain prospect of obtaining an assent 

 to such dispensation might have been of bad consequence, not only in 

 the loss of so much time, but in leaving the Commissioners in such 

 humour, as in the interim, to have suggested some new demands under 

 the head of one or more of the other articles, which might have been 

 of worse consequence than that of giving up these restraints of fishery. 

 One specimen of which we hap! yesterday, while sitting with them, 

 and under hesitation on this subject, when one of those gentlemen, 

 pulling a paper out of his pocket, proposed that His Majesty should 

 recommend to his Parliament, to make provision for the payment 

 of certain effects which had been seized by order of his generals, and 

 entirely out of the line of the consequences of military irregularities, 

 and such as they could bring undoubted proofs of, and which, he said, 

 ought to be paid upon the same principle of justice as was urged in 

 favour of the recovery of debts. 



On these and other accounts, and being in a manner certain that, 

 without an indulgence in this article of fishery, there would have 

 been no treaty with America, the above-mentioned gentlemen thought 

 it best to close with the Commissioners by admitting this article in 

 the way they proposed, in which they not only had my concurrence, 

 but I own I used the freedom to encourage and press them to give 

 their consent ; being of opinion that I would be under no difficulty in 

 showing that the grant was not of that importance as to be put in com- 

 parison with the consequences of splitting with America at this time. 

 Among other things, it occurred to me that if our caution in this 

 particular regarded our marine, and an apprehension of its being 



19th and 22nd instead of 22nd and 23rd. 



