DOCUMENTS BEARING ON TREATY OP 1783. 203 



interest it was as much as ours to cultivate friendship with them, 

 and who were certainly the best qualified for softening and human- 

 izing their hearts. But I shall dismiss this subject, though it is 

 blended with others, and proceed to the investigation of the rest of 

 the objections to the treaties of pacification. 



" Why have you given America the freedom of fishing in all your 

 creeks and harbours, and especially on the banks of Newfoundland," 

 say the noble objectors to this article? Why? Because, in the first 

 place, they could from their locality have exercised a fishery in that 

 quarter for the first season (for there are two), in spite of all our 

 efforts to repel them. In February the first season commences, and 

 that is entirely at their devotion ; for our people can never take their 

 stations there so soon. With regard to the other season, let us again 

 revert to what I have said respecting the fur trade ; though we have 

 not a monopoly, we have got such superior advantages in the article 

 of drying, curing, and preparing our fish for market, from the 

 exclusive command of the most contiguous shores, that a rivalry can 

 only whet our industry to reap those benefits our preferable situa- 

 tion in this respect presents to us. " But why have you not stipu- 

 lated a reciprocity of fishing in the American harbours and creeks? " 

 I will tell your Lordships: because we have abundant employment 

 in our own. Would not an American think it sordid in the extreme, 

 nay, consider it bordering on madness, to covet the privilege of 

 fattening our cattle on some of their sterile wilds, when we had our 

 own fertile savannahs to have recourse to ? Such would be the opin- 

 ion entertained of Ministry, if it had childishly and avariciously 

 made a stipulation of the nature the objectors think they ought to 

 have. The broad and liberal policy on which the present treaty is 

 formed, is in my opinion much more wise and beneficial than would 

 have been the narrow and wretched plan of bargaining for every 

 little particle of advantage which we might have procured, perhaps, 

 by stickling in the negociation. As to the masts, a noble Lord said, we 

 were to have in such abundance at Penobscot, I will oppose a fact to 

 his bare assertion. I have in my pocket a certificate from one of the 

 ablest surveyors in our service, Captain Twiss, that there is not a tree 

 there capable of being made into a mast. 



But there remains somewhat in these provisional articles still to 

 be considered, which I have never reflected on without feelings as 

 pungent as any which the warmest admirers of the virtues of the 

 loyalist can possibly have experienced. I mean the unhappy neces- 

 sity of our affairs, which induced the extremity of submitting the 

 fate of the property of these brave and worthy men to the discretion 

 of their enemies. I have but one answer to give the House iu this 

 particular; it is the answer I gave my own bleeding heart. A part 

 must be wounded, that the whole of the Empire may not perish. If 

 better terms could be had, think you, my Lords, that I would not have 

 embraced them ? You all know my creed. You all know my steadi- 

 ness. If it were possible to put aside the bitter cup the adversaries 

 of this country presented to me, you know I would have done it ; but 

 you called for peace. To make it in the circumstances, which your 

 Lordships all know I stood in, was most arduous. In this point, 

 nothing could be more grievous to me. Neither in public nor in 

 private life is it my character to desert my friends. I had but the 

 alternative, either to accept the terms, said Congress, of our recom- 



