494 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



gled blood of Americans and Englishmen " those strongholds 

 were won and defended. By the same argument the Eng- 

 lish could have claimed the right to navigate the Mississippi 

 River, which had been conceded to them by the treaty of 

 1783, and which Mr. Clay (one of the commissioners at 

 Ghent) declared to be forfeited by the War of 1812. 



Again, had the United States an inherent and natural 

 right to the inshore fisheries of Canada, and to the perpetual 

 use of its shores, why had these shore privileges been limited 

 by the treaty of Paris ? Why had the United States accepted 

 the privilege of curing and drying fish in Nova Scotia and 

 Labrador, and relinquished it in Newfoundland ? If Ameri- 

 can citizens had been entitled as of right to use a part of 

 the Canadian coast, they were equally entitled to use all of 

 it'. On the Newfoundland coast, where shore privileges 

 were most desired, and where long usage would have set up 

 an easement or prescriptive title fully as well as to the Nova 

 Scotia or Labrador coast, Americans had been denied all 

 landing privileges. 



Furthermore, a review of the instructions of Congress to 

 the commissioners, who negotiated the treaty of Paris, devel- 

 ops the fact that it had not been the intention or object of 

 the United States Government to insist upon a continuance 

 of the inshore fisheries which had formerly been enjoyed as 

 a right. Congress did insist on the right to fish on the 

 " Banks of Newfoundland and other fisheries in the Ameri- 

 can seas, anywhere excepting within the distance of three 

 leagues of the shores of the territory remaining to Great 

 Britain at the close of the war, if a nearer distance cannot 

 be obtained by' negotiation." A full expression of the 

 policy of the government in 1782 is given in a report of a 

 committee of Congress on certain resolutions adopted by the 

 legislature of Massachusetts touching the fisheries (1781). 

 An elaborate argument is there set forth to demonstrate the 

 freedom of the high seas, and to prove that the Bank fishery 

 may not be properly appropriated by any power. These 

 Banks, " the nearest point of which is thirty-five leagues dis- 

 tant from Cape Race, are too far advanced in the Atlantic 



