THE NORTHEAST COAST FISHERIES 497 



leads them into absurdities of reasoning that afterwards 

 seem almost inexcusable. John Quincy Adams was prob- 

 ably less influenced by the popular clamor of the day 

 than by a certain family tradition in regard to the North 

 American fisheries. His father, at Paris in 1782-83, had 

 defied the consequences of disobedience to his country's com- 

 mands, and had staked his reputation as a patriot in order 

 to wrest from Great Britain those very fishery rights that 

 he, the son, thirty-one years later at Ghent, found himself 

 called upon to protect. As a New Englander he was satu- 

 rated with the belief that the fisheries constituted the most 

 valuable American industry. It was the calling which for 

 generations his countrymen and their ancestors had fol- 

 lowed almost without interruption. The fisheries formed 

 the very basis of the great commercial interests of his own 

 New England. Under no circumstances must they be for- 

 feited through neglect or fault of his. Their loss meant 

 to his people the greatest of calamities. Thus may one 

 appreciate the mental attitude that permitted in John 

 Quincy Adams so decided a warp in his reasoning upon 

 this subject. 



A satisfactory adjustment either of the fisheries, or the 

 navigation of the Mississippi River, proved to be impossible, 

 and it was finally agreed to sign a treaty that should remain 

 silent on these two important subjects. Hence it is that no 

 mention whatever is made of the fisheries in the treaty of 

 Ghent (1814). 



VI 



The inability to reach an understanding at Ghent, in regard 

 to the fisheries left that question in a most unsatisfactory 

 condition. The war clouds of 1812 had no sooner blown 

 away than the New England fishermen appeared in force in 

 Canadian waters. A series of collisions with the Canadians 

 immediately took place. English authorities, assuming that 

 all American fishery privileges in British waters had lapsed 

 by the war, arrested numbers of Boston and Gloucester 



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