32 CASE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



vincing your lordship that, independent of the question of rigorous 

 right, it would conduce to the substantial interests of Great Britain 

 herself, as well as to the observance of those principles of benevo- 

 lence and humanity which it is the highest glory of a great and pow- 

 erful nation to respect, to leave to the American fishermen the par- 

 ticipation of those benefits which the bounty of nature has thus 

 spread before them; which are so necessary to their comfort and 

 subsistence; which they have constantly enjoyed hitherto; and which, 

 far from operating as an injury to Great Britain, had the ultimate 

 result of pouring into her lap a great portion of the profits of their 

 hardy and laborious industry ; that these fisheries afforded the means 

 of subsistence to a numerous class of people in the United States 

 whose habit of life had been fashioned to no other occupation, and 

 whose fortunes had allotted them no other possession ; that to another, 

 and, perhaps, equally numerous class of our citizens, they afforded the 

 means of remittance and payment for the productions of British 

 industry and ingenuity, imported from the manufactures of this 

 united kingdom ; that, by the comm.on and received usages among 

 civilized nations, fishermen were among those classes of human 

 society whose occupations, contributing to the general benefit and 

 welfare of the species, were entitled to a more than ordinary share 

 of protection ; that it was usual to spare and exempt them even from 

 the most exasperated conflicts of national hostility; that this nation 

 had, for ages, permitted the fishermen of another country to frequent 

 and fish upon the coasts of this island, without interrupting them, 

 even in times of ordinary war; that the resort of American fisher- 

 men to the barren, uninhabited, and, for the great part, uninhabitable 

 rocks on the coasts of Nova Scotia, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and 

 Labrador, to use them occasionally for the only purposes of utility 

 of which they are susceptible, if it must, in its nature, subject British 

 fishermen on the same coasts to the partial inconvenience of a fair 

 competition, yet produces, in its results, advantages to other British 

 interests equally entitled to the regard and fostering care of their 

 sovereign. By attributing to motives derived from such sources as 

 these the recognition of these liberties by His Majesty's Government 

 in the treaty of 1783, it would be traced to an origin certainly more 

 conformable to the fact, and surely more honorable to Great Britain, 

 than by ascribing it to the improvident grant of an unrequited privi- 

 lege, or to a concession extorted from the humiliating compliance of 

 necessity." 



In response to these suggestions. Lord Bathurst says, in his note 

 of October 30, 1815, to Mr. Adams : 



But, though Great Britain can never admit the claim of the United 

 States to enjoy those liberties with respect to the fisheries, as matter 

 of right, she is by no means insensible to some of those considerations 

 with which the letter of the American minister concludes. 



Although His Majesty's Government cannot admit that the claim 

 of the American fishermen to fish within British jurisdiction, and to 

 use the British territory for purposes connected with their fishery, 

 is analogous to the indulgence which has been granted to enemy's 



''Appendix, p. 272. 



