46 



to arrive at, and depart from, particular fishing stations ; but these in- 

 stances do not change the general truth, for most ot them were con- 

 nected with establishments occupied by persons who came to settle 

 and remain in the country. We may conjecture that these merchants 

 withdrew, because, once interrupted, they would not adventure again ; 

 or because they were satisfied that, in the long run, the Newfoundland 

 fishery would prove the safest and most profitable ; or because some 

 of them became interested with their countrymen, who, meantime, had 

 founded the colonies of Plymouth, New Hampshire, and Maine, who 

 had set up fishing-stages at Cape Ann, and were about to undertake 

 the colonization of Massachusetts on an extensive plan. 



The disasters, at most, were limited and partial. The benefits were 

 general, and of vast consequence. Had the council succeeded in their 

 measures the whole course of affairs would have been arrested, and the 

 settlement of the country postponed indefinitely. Before the dissolution 

 of the corporation, eight patents of soil and fisheries were granted in 

 Maine; and the long, expensive, and vexatious quarrels which arose 

 there between rival patentees, and the claimants under them, prove 

 conclusively that, had the seas and territory of all New England been 

 lotted and parcelled out in the same way, our history, for an entire 

 centur}', would have contained little else than accounts of strifes, com- 

 motions, and forcible possessions and ejections. 



Several of the patents issued by the council previous to 1626 convey, 

 either by implication or in express terms, to the patentees, the exclusive 

 right of fishing within their domains; and in their eighth and last, to 

 Aldworth and Elbridge, two merchants of Bristol, England, dated in 

 1631, and known in Maine as the " Petnaquid patent," this provision 

 is retained. But grants to individuals to monopolize our seas disappear 

 ever afterward. 



In the charter to Calvert, of Maryland, the freedom of the fisheries is 

 expressly stipulated. So, too, in the grant to Gorges, the great cham- 

 pion of monopoly, any subject could fish in Maine, and use the shores 

 for purposes of curing and drying. 



The patent to Sir Henry Roswell and others, of Massachusetts, de- 

 fines with almost tedious particularity the rights to be enjoyed by all 

 the inhabitants of the realm in any of the seas, arms of the sea, and 

 salt-water rivers, as well as those of drying, keeping, and packing fish 

 on the lands appurtenant. 



In like manner the charter of Rhode Island, granted by Charles the 

 Second, expresses the royal will and pleasure to be that "our loving 

 subjects, and every one of them," shall "exercise the trade of fishing" 

 where "they had been accustomed to fish." Even after the expulsion 

 of the Stuarts, and in the second charter of Massachusetts, in the reign 

 of William and Mary, when our fishing grounds had been open more 

 than sixty years, the principles asserted by Coke in the House of Com- 

 mons are as carefully recognised and repeated as he himself could have 

 desired. In these, and in similar instruments, then, and not in the sta- 

 tistics of vessels and men at a particular time, we are to seek for the 

 fruits of the victory obtained by the sturdy advocates of "fi-ee fishing, 

 with all its incidents," in America. 



We may now pause a moment to discuss a kindred topic, which 



