THE NORTHEAST COAST FISHERIES 485 



have expended beyond all proportion more than you. If, 

 then, the right cannot be denied, why should it not be 

 acknowledged and be put out of dispute ? Why should we 

 leave room for illiterate fishermen to wrangle and chicane ? " 

 As finally signed on September 3, 1783, Article III of the 

 treaty of Paris stands as follows : 



It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue 

 to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the 

 Grand Bank, and on all the other banks of Newfoundland; also 

 in the Gulph of St. Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea, 

 where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time hereto- 

 fore to fish; and also that the inhabitants of the United States 

 shall have the liberty to take fish of every kind on such part of 

 the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use (but 

 not to dry or cure the same on that island) ; and also on the 

 coasts, bays and creeks, of all other of His British Majesty's 

 dominions in America; and that the American fishermen shall 

 have the liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, 

 harbours and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Lab- 

 rador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled ; but so soon as 

 the same, or either of them shall be settled, it shall not be law- 

 ful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement, 

 without a previous agreement for that purpose with the inhabit- 

 ants, proprietors or possessors of the ground. 



It will be observed, then, that in regard to the fisheries, 

 very few privileges enjoyed by the American colonists (as 

 British subjects) were denied to them as American citizens by 

 the treaty of Paris. The Bank fishery was recognized by 

 England to be beyond her legislative control, and therefore 

 open and free to the world ; likewise the fishery of the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence. The treaty rights to take fish in the in- 

 shore waters of Canada were ample ; all that marine area, 

 including the bays and creeks of the Dominion coast, 

 was left free to American fishermen. Two restrictions only 

 were placed upon them, first, that they should not use the 

 Newfoundland shores for purposes of drying or curing their 

 fish, and second, they should not, upon all the balance of 

 the British-American coast (where such privileges were 

 granted), so locate their stages as to molest or annoy the 



