226 APPENDIX TO BBITISH: COUNTEB CASE. 



preferable to any European claim ; but that we asked no preference ; 

 but acknowledged the right of all nations to the ocean and its in- 

 habitants ; that we were in possession, and had been so from the first 

 settlement of our country; we had carried on the fisheries from the 

 beginning; and that Great Britain was more indebted to our ances- 

 tors for the flourishing state of the fisheries, both of cod and whales, 

 than to all the inhabitants of the three kingdoms ; that the fisheries 

 were an essential link in the chain of American commerce, which 

 was one connected system; that they were more particularly indis- 

 pensable to New England ; that our remittances to France or Eng- 

 land could not be made without our commerce in fish with Spain, 

 Portugal, and Italy, as well as all the West India Islands 



No. 145. 1814, December 17: Extract from letter, Mr. Madison to 



Mr. Adams. 



WASHINGTON, 17 December, 18H. 



.... I have caused the archives of the department to be searched, 

 with an eye to what passed during the negotiations for peace on the 

 subject of the fisheries. The search has not furnished a precise 

 answer to the inquiry of Mr. Adams. It appears from one of your 

 letters, referring to the instructions accompanying the commission to 

 make a treaty of commerce with Great Britain, that the original 

 views of Congress did not carry their ultimatum beyond the common 

 right to fish in waters distant three leagues from the British shores. 

 The negotiations, therefore, and not the instructions, if no subsequent 

 change of them took place, have the merit of the terms actually ob- 

 tained. That other instructions, founded on the resolutions of Con- 

 gress, issued at subsequent periods, cannot be doubted, though, as 

 yet, they do not appear. But how far they distinguished between 

 the common use of the sea, and the use, then common, also, of the 

 shores, in carrying on the fisheries, I have no recollection 



