AWARD OP THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1657 



Parliament, I agree that they put this right, as they put their lives, at * 

 hazard ; but, fortunately for us, the war did not turn out a conquest of 

 any of our rights. At the close of the war, the Treaty of 1783 was 

 made. Now, at the time when the Treaty of 1783 was made, Great 

 Britain did not claim to have conquered America, or to have taken from 

 us by military force any of our rights, and the consequence was that in 

 framing the Treaty of 1783, while they altered, by common consent, 

 some of the division lines, none by right of conquest, they declared that 

 the people of the United States shall " continue to enjoy unmolested 

 the right to take fish of every kind on the British Banks, and all other 

 Banks of Newfoundland ; also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all other 

 places in the sea where the inhabitants of both countries used at any 

 time heretofore to fish." What could be stronger than that ! It was 

 an acknowledgment of a continued right possessed long before. And 

 if any question of its construction arose, it appealed to what they had 

 been heretofore accustomed to do ; " where the inhabitants of both 

 countries used at any time heretofore to fish." 



How was it construed by British statesmen ? Is there any doubt 

 about it ? I take it my brethren of the colonial bar will consider Lord 

 Loughborough good authority. He said these words in the House of 

 Lords respecting the fishery clause of the treaty : " The fisheries were 

 not conceded, but recognized as a right inherent in the Americans, which, 

 though no longer British subjects, they are to continue to enjoy unmolested" 

 The same thing, substantially, was said by Lord North, who had been, 

 we are told now by his biographers, the unwilling, but certainly the 

 subservient, instrument in the hands of his king for trying to deprive us 

 of this as well as our other rights. We then did continue to enjoy 

 them, as we had from 1620 down. We had as much right to them as 

 the British Crown, because it was our bow and our spear that helped to 

 conquer them. Then came the war of 1812, and we had enjoyed the 

 fisheries freely, without geographical limit, down to that time. The war 

 of 1812 certainly did not result in the conquest of America, either mari- 

 time or Upon the land. It was fought out in a manly way between two 

 strong people, without any very decided result; but after the war, in 

 1814, about the time we were making the treaty of peace at Ghent, that 

 memorable correspondence took place between John Quincy Adams and 

 'Earl Bathurst, in which Earl Bathurst took this extraordinary position, 

 that a war terminates all treaties. He took that position without lim- 

 itation. Mr. Adams said, " Then it puts an end to our independence." 



" No," was Earl Bathurst's answer ; " your independence does not rest 

 upon the treaty. The treaty acknowledged your independence as a fact, 

 and that fact continues. No treaty now can take it from you ; no treaty 

 is needed to secure it to you ; but so far as it was a treaty I mean, so 

 far as any right rested upon it as a treaty gift, or treaty stipulation, the 

 war put an end to the treaty." Mr. Adams's answer was twofold ; first, 

 he denied the position. He took the ground, which all statesmen and 

 jurists take to-day, that a war does not, ipso facto, terminate a treaty. 

 It depends upon the results of the war ; it depends upon the nature of 

 the treaty ; it depends -upon its language and terms. Each case is sui 

 generis. Whether any war I mean the entering into war, the fact that 

 the two nations are at war terminates a treaty, depends upon these 

 questions. The treaty is put at hazard, like all other things. The 

 termination of the war may terminate all treaties by a new treaty, or 

 by conquest ; but the fact that there is war. which is the only proposi- 

 tion, does not terminate any treaty, necessarily. Then Mr. Adams fur- 

 ther says : " Our right does not rest upon the treaty. The treaty of 1783 



