1592 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



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

 and those claims bad 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 i he treaty was formed, in 1783, and that explains the reason why, 

 uhen 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 insisted 

 PO 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 willed forth the eulogy of Burke over a hundred years ago. It was 

 the cud-fishery and the whale-fishery for which the first and second 

 Ail mi- so strenuously contended ; and, inasmuch as it was fouud impos- 

 sible in the treaty at the end of the war of 1812 to come to any adjust- 

 ment 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 Britain 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 perma- 

 nent character, and not terminated by the war of 1812 ; but no conclu- 

 sion was arrived at between the parties. What followed ? The best 

 account of the controversy to be found is in a book called " The Fish- 

 eries and the Mississippi," which contains John Quiucy 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 cruisers 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 to the 

 Convention of 1818; and the Convention of 1818, in the opinion of Mr. 

 Adams, conceded to the United States all that they desired. He be- 

 lieved and asserted that Great Britain had claimed, and intended to 

 claim, exclusive jurisdiction over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and over 

 the Banks of Newfoundland, and he considered and stated that the 

 Treaty of ISIS, in setting at rest forever those pretensions, obtained for 

 the United States substantially what they desired. A passage is quoted 

 in the reply of Her Majesty's Government to the United States Answer, 

 from this book, in which Mr. Adams says: "The Newfoundland, Nova 

 Scotia, Gulf of Saint Lawrence and Labrador fisheries, are in nature 

 ami in consideration both of their value and of the right to share in 

 them one fishery. To be cut off from the enjoyment of that right would 

 W to the people of Massachusetts similar in kind and comparable in 

 degree with an interdict to the people of Georgia and Louisiana to cul- 

 e cotton or sugar. To be cut off even from that portion of it which 

 ithiu the exclusive British jurisdiction in the strictest sense within 

 Saint Lawrence and on the coast of Labrador would have 

 f an interdict upon the people of Georgia or Louisiana to culti- 

 .011 or sugar in three-fourths of those respective States." But 

 i to speak of the warning off of American vessels sixty miles 

 rroauiHaml, and then says: "It was this incident which led to 

 Upas which terminated in the Convention of the 20th of 

 In that instrument, the United States renounced forever 

 lahiug liberties which they had enjoyed or claimed in 

 :H of the exclusive jurisdiction of the British Provinces, and 

 : marine mitn of the shores. This privilege, without being of 



