28 CASE OF THE UXITED STATES. 



In the third article, Great Britain acknowledged the nght of the 

 United States to take fish on the Banks of Newfoundland and other 

 places, from which Great Britain has no right to exclude an inde- 

 pendent nation. But they are to have the liberty to cure and dry 

 them in certain unsettled places within His Majesty's territory. If 

 these liberties, thus granted, were to be as perpetual and indefeasible 

 as the rights previously recognised, it is difficult to conceive that the 

 plenipotentiaries of the United States would have admitted a varia- 

 tion of language so adapted to produce a different impression; 

 and, above all, that they should have admitted so strange a restriction 

 of a perpetual and indefeasible right as that with which the article 

 concludes, which leaves a right so practical and so beneficial as this 

 is admitted to be, dependent on the will of British subjects in their 

 character of inhabitants, proprietors or possessors of the soil, to 

 prohibit its exercise altogether. 



It is surely obvious that the word right is, throughout the treaty, 

 used as applicable to what the United Stages were to enjoy, in virtue 

 of a recognised independence ; and the word liberty to what they were 

 to enjoy, as concessions strictly dependent on the treaty itself." 



Mr. Adams' reply to Lord Bathurst's argument on this point is as 



follows : 



The answer of Lord Bathurst denies that Great Britain has made 

 such a selection, and affirms that the whole treaty of 1783 was an- 

 nulled by the late war. It admits, however, that the recognition of 

 independence and the boundaries was in the nature of a perpetual 

 obligation; and that, with the single exception of the liberties in and 

 connected with the fisheries within British jurisdiction on the coasts 

 of North America, the United States are entitled to all the benefits 

 of all the stipulations in their favor contained in the treaty of 1783, 

 although the stipulations themselves are supposed to be annulled. 

 The fishing liberties within British jurisdiction alone are considered 

 as a temporary grant, liable not only to abrogation by war, but, as it 

 would seem from the tenor of the argument, revocable at the pleasure 

 of Great Britain, whenever she might consider the revocation suitable 

 to her interest. The note affirms that " the liberty to fish within 

 British limits, or to use British territory, is essentially different from 

 the right to independence in all that can reasonably be supposed to 

 regard its intended duration ; that the grant of this liberty has all the 

 aspect of a policy, temporary and expenmental, depending on the use 

 that might be made of it, on the condition of the islands and places 

 where it was to be exercised, and the more general conveniences or 

 inconveniences, in a military, naval, or commercial point of view, re- 

 sulting from the access of an independent nation to such islands and 

 places." 



The undersigned is induced, on this occasion, to repeat his lord- 

 ship's own words, because, on a careful and deliberate review of the 

 article in question, he is unable to discover in it a single expression 

 indicating, even in the most distant manner, a policy, temporary or 

 experimental, or having the remotest connexion with military, naval 

 or commercial conveniences or inconveniences to Great Britain. He 

 has not been inattentative to the variation in the terms, by which 



« Appendix, p. 276. 



