16 CASE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



made by the American Plenipotentiaries to their Government after 

 the close of the negotiations as follows : 



Our instructions had forbidden us to suffer our right to the fish- 

 eries to be brought into discussion, and had not authorized us to make 

 any distinction in the several provisions of the third article of the 

 treaty of 1783, or between that article and any other of the same 

 treaty. We had no equivalent to offer for a new recognition of our 

 right to any part of the fisheries, and we had no power to grant any 

 equivalent which might be asked for it by the British Government. 

 We contended that the whole treaty of 1783 must be considered as one 

 entire and permanent compact, not liable, like ordinary treaties, to 

 be abrogated by a subsequent war between the j^arties to it; as an 

 instrument recognising the rights and liberties enjoyed by the people 

 of the United States as an independent nation, and containing the 

 terms and conditions on which the two parts of one empire had mu- 

 tually agreed, thenceforth, to constitute two distinct and separate 

 nations. In consenting by that treaty, that a part of the North 

 American continent should remain subject to the British jurisdiction, 

 the people of the United States had reserved to themselves the liberty, 

 which they had ever before enjoyed, of fishing upon that part of its 

 coasts, and of drying and curing fish upon the shores, and this reser- 

 vation had been agreed to by the other contracting part3^ We saw 

 not why this liberty, then no new grant, but the mere recognition of 

 a prior right always enjoyed, should be forfeited by war, any more 

 than any other of the rights of our national independence; or why 

 we should need a new stipulation for its enjoyment more than we 

 needed a new article to declare that the King of Great Britain treated 

 with us as free, sovereign, and inde|>endent States. We stated this 

 principle in general terms to the British plenipotentiaries, in the 

 note, which we sent to them with our projct of the treaty, and we 

 alleged it as the ground upon which no new stipulation was deemed 

 by our Government necessary to secure to the people of the United 

 States all the rights and liberties stipulated in their favor by the treaty 

 of 1783.<^ 



No other reference to the fisheries is found in the protocols of the 

 conferences or in the correspondence between the British and Ameri- 

 can Plenipotentiaries until the closing days of the negotiations. 

 Meanwhile, however. Great Britain had brought into the negotia- 

 tions a proposal for renewing and enlarging the privileges which 

 British subjects had enjoyed in the navigation of the Mississippi 

 Hiver under Article VIII of the treaty of 1783, which Article was as 

 follows : 



The navigation of the Mississippi Kiver, from its source to the 

 ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great 

 Britain and the citizens of the United States. 



"Appendix, p. 258. 



