THE NORTHEAST COAST FISHERIES 479 



barring certain delegates from the extreme South. These 

 legislators represented constituents who had never partici- 

 pated in the fisheries, and who therefore felt their import- 

 ance less keenly. Mr. Gerry, of Massachusetts, replied to 

 their protests against making free fishery an important 

 feature of the coming peace negotiations : " It is not so 

 much fishing as enterprise, industry, employment. It is not 

 fish merely, which gentlemen sneer at, it is gold, the prod- 

 uct of that avocation. It is the employment of those who 

 would otherwise be idle, the food of those who would other- 

 wise be hungry, the wealth of those who would otherwise be 

 poor, that depend on your putting these resolutions into the 

 instructions of your minister." 



After a lengthy debate (1779) Congress instructed John 

 Adams, who was then in Europe acting in a diplomatic 

 capacity, and to whom had been entrusted the responsibility 

 of negotiating a treaty of peace with England, " that the 

 common right of fishing would in no case be given up " ; 

 " that it is essential to the welfare of all the United States 

 that the inhabitants thereof, at the expiration of the war, 

 should continue to enjoy the free and undisturbed exercise 

 of their common right to fish on the Banks of Newfound- 

 land, and all other fishing banks and seas of North America, 

 preserving inviolate the treaties between France and the said 

 States " ; " that our faith be pledged to the several states 

 that without their unanimous consent no treaty of commerce 

 shall be entered into, nor any trade or commerce whatever 

 carried on with Great Britain, without the explicit stipula- 

 tion hereinafter mentioned. You are, therefore, not to con- 

 sent to any treaty of commerce with Great Britain without 

 an explicit stipulation on her part not to molest or disturb 

 the inhabitants of the United States of America in taking 

 fish on the Banks of Newfoundland, and other fisheries in 

 the American seas, anywhere except within the distance of 

 three leagues of the shores of the territories remaining to 

 Great Britain at the close of the war. If a nearer distance 

 cannot be obtained by negotiations, you are to exert your 

 most strenuous endeavors to obtain a nearer distance in the 



