THE NORTHEAST COAST FISHERIES 489 



and valuable fishery rights to her seceded colonists. Accord- 

 ingly, at the close of the War of 1812 (though before the 

 battle of New Orleans), when the American peace commis- 

 sioners arrived in Ghent for the purpose of making a new 

 treaty with England, they were met at the outset by the asser- 

 tion of the British commissioners that " it was thought proper 

 in candor to state, that in relation to the fisheries, although 

 it was not intended to contest the right of the United States 

 to them, yet so far as respected the concessions to land and 

 dry fisli within the exclusive jurisdiction of the British, it was 

 proposed not to renew that without an equivalent," and fur- 

 ther, that " the British Government did not intend to grant to 

 the United States gratuitously the privileges formerly granted 

 by treaty to them, of fishing within the limits of the British 

 sovereignty, and of using the shores of the British territo- 

 ries for purposes connected with the British fisheries." John 

 Quincy Adams, speaking for the American commissioners, 

 replied that they had not intended to mention the subject 

 of fisheries, that question not being one of the subjects of 

 difference in the war just concluded. 



Although it had become apparent before 1812 that different 

 conceptions of the force and character of the third article of 

 the treaty of Paris were held in England and the United 

 States, then for the first time, the opposing views, as to the 

 exact nature of American claims to the inshore fisheries as 

 expressed by that article, came face to face. 



The English held that the liberties accorded the Americans 

 by the third article of the treaty of 1783 to fish within the 

 territorial waters of Great Britain and to land on the shores 

 of Nova Scotia, to dry and cure fish, were in the nature 

 of a grant or a concession, and were liable, as are all such 

 treaty rights and privileges, to abrogation by subsequent 

 war between the parties. The British commissioners as- 

 sumed, therefore, that these inshore privileges had been ter- 

 minated by the War of 1812, and that should the United States 

 desire a renewal or modification of them, such could only be 

 obtained through new treaty stipulations. They drew, a dis- 

 tinction, however, between the fisheries on the Banks (or in 



