184 



" the government of the United States, to entitle them to the fuH 

 *' enjoyment of all of them." 



As the treaty of Ghent was concluded without any article relat- 

 ing to the fisheries, the only grounds upon which our rights and 

 liberties in them could be maintained against Great Britain after 

 the peace, were contained in the principle asserted by this para- 

 graph. They rested, therefore, upon the nature of the rights and 

 liberties of the people of this Union, in and to those fisheries, and 

 upon the peculiar character of the treaty recognising them. What 

 was the nature of those rights and liberties ? And what was the 

 peculiar character of that treaty ? 



The nature of the rights and liberties, consisted in the free par- 

 ticipation in a fishery. That fishery covering the bottom of the 

 banks which surround the island of Newfoundland, the coasts 

 of New-England, Nova Scotia, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and 

 Labrador, furnishes the richest treasure and the most benefi- 

 cent tribute that ocean pays to earth on this terraqueous globe — - 

 By the pleasure of the Creator of earth and seas, it had been con- 

 stituted in its physical nature one fishery, extending in the open seas 

 around that island, to little less than tive degrees of latitude from 

 the coast, spreading along the whole northern coast of this conti- 

 nent, and insinuating itself into all the bays, creeks, and harbours 

 to the very borders of the shores. For the full enjoyment of an 

 equal share in this fishery, it was necessary to have a nearly ge- 

 neral access to every part of it. The habits of the game which it 

 pursues being so far migratory that they were found at different 

 periods most abundant in different places, sometimes populating 

 the banks and at others swarming close upon the shores. The 

 latter portion of the fishery had, however, always been considered 

 as the most valuable, inasmuch as it afforded the means of drying 

 and curing the fish immediately after they were caught, which 

 could not be effected upon the banks. 



By the law of nature this fishery belonged to the inhabitants of 

 the regions in the neighbourhood of which it was situated. By the 

 conventional law of Europe, it belonged to the European nations 

 which had formed settlements in those regions. France, as the 

 first principal settler in them, had long claimed the exclusive right 

 to it. Great Britain, moved in no small degree by the value of the 

 fishery itself, had made the conquest of all those regions upon 

 France, and had limited by treaty, within a narrow compass, the 

 right of France to any share in the fishery. Spain, upon some 

 claim of prior discovery had for some time enjoyed a share of the 

 fishery on the banks ; but at the last treaty of peace, prior to the 

 American revolution, had expressly renounced it. 



At the commencement of the American revolution, therefore, 

 this fishery belonged exclusively to the British nation, subject to a 

 certain limited participation in it reserved by treaty stipulationtj 

 to France 



