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trine that the British sovereign had an absolute unlimited control 

 over the commerce and fisheries of the colonies, and that he needed 

 nothing more than his maxim of nullum tempiis occurrit regi, to cut 

 them off" from them, T^lienever and however he might think proper. 



Had Mr. Russell been prime minister of Great Britain in 1775, 

 with how much easier and speedier a process than by an act of 

 parliament, would he have cut off the commerce and the fisheries 

 of the colonies. His doctrine of the royal prerogative, and his 

 maxim of milium tempus occurrit regi, would have sufficed,, with 

 a mere order in council to accomplish the work. 



This act of parliament continued in force during the whole war 

 of the American Revolution ; and as the Declaration of Indepenti- 

 ence was subsequent to and partly founded upon its enactment, 

 when the parties came to negotiate the treaty of peace, or rather 

 the prehminary articles of November, 1782, to which the whole 

 argument applies, their situations and relative interests, claims, and 

 principles, were certainly very peculiar. The whole fishery^ 

 (with the exception of the reserved and limited right of France,) 

 was the exclusive property of the British empire. The right to a 

 full participation in that property, belonged by the law of nature to 

 the people of New England, from their locality. Their national 

 right to it as British subjects, had, as the United States maintained, 

 been tyrannically violated, but not extinguished ; and, as the other 

 party to the negotiation asserted, forfeited by their rebellion, and 

 lawfully taken from them by act of Parliament, the supreme su- 

 perintending authority of the whole empire. It was one of the 

 questions upon which the war itself had hinged, and in the interval 

 between the Declaration of Independence, and the negotiation tor 

 peace, it had been among the subjects of the deepest and most 

 anxious deliberations of Congress, how this great interest should be 

 adjusted at the peace. In the second volume of the Secret Jour- 

 nals of the Confederation Congress, recently published, it will be 

 found, that from the 17th of February to the 14th of August, 1779, 

 the various questions connected with this interest, formed the sub- 

 ject of the most earnest and continual debates, and the numerous 

 propositions upon which the yeas and nays were taken, manifestly 

 show the determination with which they resolved, in no event 

 whatever, to abandon the right to share in this fishery ; and the 

 perplexities under which they laboured in deciding, as well whether 

 it should or should not be made a sine qua non for peace, as how 

 they should secure the continuance of that portion of the fishery 

 which, with the boundary line which they ultimately concluded to 

 accept, would fall within the immediate territorial jurisdiction of 

 the provinces to remain in British possession. 



By the third article of the preliminaries of November, 1782, and 

 also by the corresponding article of the definitive treaty of 1783, 

 the whole of the fishing rights and liberties were secured, and re- 

 cognised, as rights and liberties, pre-existing, and not as temporary 

 grants— the variation of the terms in the article, securing the righi 



