DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 305 



Early in the diplomatic history of this case we find that the Treaty 

 of Paris in 1763 excluded French fishermen three leagues from the 

 coast belonging to Great Britain in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and 

 fifteen leagues from the island of Cape Breton. We find that the 

 treaty with Spain in the same year contained a relinquishment of all 

 Spanish fishing rights in the neighborhood of Newfoundland. The 

 Crown of Spain expressly desisted from all pretensions to the right 

 of fishing in the neighborhood of Newfoundland. Those are the two 

 treaties of 1763 the Treaty of Paris with France and the treaty with 

 Spain. Obviously, at that time, Great Britain claimed for herself 

 exclusive sovereignty over the whole Gulf of St. Lawrence and over 

 a large part of the adjacent seas. By the Treaty of Versailles, in 

 1783, substantially the same provisions of exclusion were made with 

 reference to the French fishermen. Now, in that broad claim of 

 jurisdiction over the adjacent seas, in the right asserted and main- 

 tained to have British subjects fish there exclusively, the fishermen 

 of New England, as British subjects, shared. Undoubtedly, the pre- 

 tensions thpt were yielded to by those treaties have long since dis- 

 appeared. Nobody believes now that Great Britain has any ex- 

 clusive jurisdiction over the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the Banks of 

 Newfoundland, but at the time when the United States asserted their 

 independence and when the treaty was formed between the United 

 States and Great Britain, such were the claims of England, and 

 those claims had been acquiesced in by France and by Spain. That 

 explains the reason why it was that the elder Adams said he would 

 rather cut off his right hand than give up the fisheries at the time the 

 treaty was formed, in 1783, and that explains the reason why, when 

 his son, John Quincy Adams, was one of the Commissioners who 

 negotiated the Treaty of Ghent, at the end of the war of 1812, he in- 

 sisted so strenuously that nothing should be done to give away the 

 rights of the citizens of the United States in these ocean fisheries. 

 Those are the fisheries which existed in that day, and those alone. 

 The mackerel fishery was unknown. It was the cod-fishery and the 

 whale-fishery that called forth the eulogy of Burke over a hundred 

 years ago. It was the cod-fishery and the whale-fishery for which the 

 first and second Adams so strenuously contended; and, inasmuch as 

 it was found impossible in the treaty at the end of the war of 1812 to 

 come to any adjustment of the fishery question, all mention of it was 

 omitted in the treaty. The treaty was made leaving each party to 

 assert his claims at some future time. And so it stood; Great Brit- 

 ain having given notice that she did not intend to renew the rights 

 and privileges conceded to the United States in the Treaty of 1783, 

 and the United States giving notice that they regarded the privileges 

 of the Treaty of 1783 as of a permanent character, and not terminated 

 by the war of 1812; but no conclusion was arrived at between the 

 parties. What followed? The best account of the controversy to be 

 found is in a book called " The Fisheries and the Mississippi," which 

 contains John Quincy Adams's letters on the subject of the Treaty of 

 Ghent and the convention of 1818. 



Mr. Adams in that book says that the year after peace was declared, 

 British cruizers warned all American fishing-vessels not to approach 

 within sixty miles from the coast of Newfoundland, and that it was 

 in consequence of this that the negotiations were begun which led 



