184 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



Upon the hypothesis which is most satisfactory to us, and the most 

 hopeful, we have different points to discuss with the English Min- 

 isters; first of all, their official declaration of their concessions to 



us. The perusals of the preliminaries of the Americans will 

 111 make you feel how important it is that their concessions should 



be free from ambiguity in respect to the exclusive exercise of 

 pur rights of fishing. The Americans acquiring the right to fish 

 in common with the English fishermen, they should have no occasion 

 or pretext for troubling us. 



No. 116. 1872: Article Proposed and Read to the Commissioners be- 

 fore signing the Preliminary Articles. 11 



It is agreed that his Britannic majesty will earnestly recommend 

 it to his Parliament to provide for and make a compensation to the 

 merchants and shop-keepers of Boston whose goods and merchandise 

 were seized and taken out of their stores, warehouses, and shops by 

 order of General Gage and others of his commanders and officers 

 there; and also to the inhabitants of Philadelphia, for the goods 

 taken away by his army there ; and to make compensation also for the 

 tobacco, rice, indigo, and negroes, &c., seized and carried off by his 

 armies under Generals Arnold, Cornwallis, and others from the 

 States of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, and also 

 for all vessels and cargoes belonging to the inhabitants of the said 

 United States which were stopped, seized, or taken either in the ports 

 or on the seas, by his governors or by his ships of war before the 

 declaration of war against the said States. 



And it is further agreed that his Britannic majesty will also 

 earnestly recommend it to his Parliament to make compensation for 

 all the towns, villages, and farms burnt and destroyed by his troops 

 or adherents in the said United States. 



FACTS. 



There existed a free commerce upon mutual faith between Great 

 Britain and America. The merchants of the former credited the 

 merchants and planters of the latter with great quantities of goods 

 on the common expectation that the merchants, having sold the goods, 

 would make the accustomed remittances; that the planters would do 

 the same by the labor of their negroes and the produce of that labor, 

 tobacco, rice, indigo. &c. 



England, before the goods were sold in America, sends an armed 

 force, seizes those goods in the stores, some even in the ships that 

 brought them, and carries them off; seizes also and carries off the 

 tobacco, rice, and indigo, provided by the planters to make returns, 

 and even the negroes, from whose labor they might hope to raise other 

 produce for that purpose. 



Britain now demands that the debts shall nevertheless be paid. 



. . . . This article, and the facts which follow, were drawn up by Dr. 

 Franklin, and intended to be insisted on in case the British Commissioners 

 persevered in their demands respecting the fisheries. See Franklin to Livings- 

 ton, December 5, 1782, infra [Rev. Dip. Corr., vol. v, p. 842.] 



