108 



and, above all, it another mind could have been found in the mw* 

 sion, capable of concurring with him in those views, it would at 

 least have required of the majority an inflexihility of fortitude, 

 beyond that of any trial by which they were visited, to have per- 

 severed in their proposal. Had they concurred with him in his 

 opinion of the total abrogation of the treaty of 1783, by the mere 

 fact of the war, the fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the 

 coast of Labrador, and to an indefinite extent from the Island of 

 Newfoundland, were lost to the United States forever, or at least 

 till the indignant energy of the nation should have recovered, by 

 conquestj the rights thus surrendered to usurpation. In notifying 

 to us that the British government intended not to renew the grant 

 of the fisheries within British jurisdiction, they had not said what 

 extent they meant to give to these terms. They had said they did 

 not mean to extend it to the right of the fisheries, generally, or in 

 the open seas, enjoyed by all other nations. (.See Letter of the AmC' 

 rican Commissioners to the Secretary of State of \2th August, 1814, 

 Wait's State Papers, vol, 9, p. 321.) But there was not wanting his- 

 torical exposition of what Great Britain understood by her exclu- 

 sive jurisdiction as applied to these fisheries. In the 12th article 

 of the treaty of Utrecht, by which Nova Scotia or Acadia had been, 

 ceded by France to Great Britain, the cession had been made " in 

 '* such ample manner and form, that the subjects of the most 

 *' Christian King shall hereafter he excluded from all kind of fish- 

 *' ing in the said seas, bays, and other places on the coasts of Nova 

 *' Scotia ; that is to say, on those which lie towards the east, within 

 " THIRTY LEAGUES, beginning from the island commonly called 

 " Sable, inclusively, and thence along towards the southwest." 



By the thirteenth article of the same treaty, French subjects 

 were excluded from fishing on any other part of the coast of the 

 Island of Newfoundland, then from Cape Bonavista northward, and 

 then westward to Point Riche. By the fifteenth article of the treaty 

 of Utrecht, between Great Britain and Spain, certain rights of fish- 

 ing at the Island of Newfoundland, had been reserved to the Gui- 

 puscoans, and other subjects of Spain ; but in the eighteenth article 

 of the treaty of peace between Great Britain and Spain, of 1763, 

 bis Catholic majesty had desisted, "as well for himself as for his 

 successors, from all pretension which he might have formed in fa- 

 vour of the Guipuscoans and other his subjects, to the right of 

 fishing IN THE KEiGHBOURHOOD of the Island of Newfoundland.'* 

 In these several cases, it is apparent that Great Britain had assert- 

 ed and maintained an exclusive and proprietary jurisdiction over 

 the whole fishing grounds of the Grand Bank, as well as on the 

 coast of North America, and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Nor 

 are we without subsequent indications of what she would have 

 considered as her exclusive jurisdiction, if a majority of the Ame- 

 rican commission at Ghent had been as ready as Mr. Russell de- 

 clares himself to have been, to subscribe to her doctrine, that all 

 our fishing liberties had lost, by the war, every vestige of right. 



