182 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



session of West Florida, the Line of north Boundary between the 

 said Province and the United States, shall be a Line drawn from 

 the Mouth of the River Yassous where it unites with the Mississippi 

 due East to the River Apalachicola. 



Done at Paris the thirtieth day of November, in the year One 

 thousand Seven hundred and Eighty Two. 



RICHARD OSWALD (L. s.) 



JOHN ADAMS (L. s.) 



B FRANKLIN (L. s.) 



JOHN JAY (L. s.) 



HENRY LAURENS. (L. s.) 



Attest 



CALEB WHITEFOORD Secy to the British Commission 

 Attest 



W. T. FRANKLIN Secy to the American Commission 



110 No. 114. 1782, December 4-' Extract from letter, Mr. Fitzher- 

 bert to Lord SheTburne. 



Private PARIS December 4.th 178%. 



MY LORD. Your Lordship will have seen before this letter reaches 

 you the signed copy of our conditional preliminary articles with 

 America, and you will likewise have received from Mr. Strachey an 

 ample detail of all the conferences upon that convention, and of the 

 reasons which induced that gentleman and myself to concur in opin- 

 ion with Mr. Oswald as to the expediency of signing it without wait- 

 ing for further instructions. I can truly assure your Lordship that 

 in regard to the fishery, no pains nor instances were spared in order 

 to settle that article according to the ideas of the British cabinet, 1st 

 by restraining the Americans to the fishery upon the Great Bank; 

 2d by restraining them (agreeably to the hint thrown out in your 

 Lordship's letter to me of the 24th) merely to the cod-fishery; 3d by 

 preventing them from drying their fish on the shores of Nova Scotia, 

 and lastly by having the article so worded as that the fishery on the 

 Great Bank should be stipulated for, not as a matter of right, but as 

 a matter of grace and favour; but upon all these articles the Com- 

 missioners in general and particularly the eldest of them, Mr. Adams 

 (who your Lordship knows is from New England) were absolutely 

 inflexible. We however obtained, and I can assure your Lordship 

 that it was not without difficulty, the exclusion of the American fish- 

 ermen from drying upon Newfoundland, and from fishing on any 

 part of that coast, excepting what we ourselves use, a clause, by which 

 all complaints from this court of having been unfairly dealt with 

 are effectually precluded. Upon the whole with regard to this Amer- 

 ican treaty I must take the liberty to deliver it to your Lordship as 

 my opinion, that all the articles of it were, as matters then stood, 

 the most favourable that could possibly have been obtained. I say, 

 as matters then stood, because, had the negotiation been managed dif- 

 ferently at its first setting out, it is not improbable that the 



