212 



are much better able to conceive than I am to describe ; but I with 

 pleasure point them anew for your consideration, as on many ac* 

 counts presenting one of the most interesting public objects to which 

 it can be directed. 



Lucrative, however, and imposing in its individual and national 

 bearings, as this fishery was and was to become, it was little known 

 to the leading men of our country, and little spoken of by others, 

 even in IMassachusetts, or among those who were actually engaged 

 in it, and a knowledge of its existence in any thing like its real 

 extent, or future capability, was perhaps confined to not more than 

 half a dozen heads, (if so many,) in the whole of the Southern and 

 Western, and even Middle divisions of the Union. 



** The causes of its value and importance not being a matter of 

 great notoriety here, are obvious ; it was an employment not only 

 in the fishery, but in many instances undoubtedly in trade, with 

 the British inhabitants ; those who were engaged in it made no un- 

 necessary promulgations of their employment, while the poorer in- 

 habitants of the provinces, tasting equally its sweets and advan- 

 tages, were alike disposed to keep silence with regard to it ; but not 

 so situated were the provincial governments, and the more wealthy 

 of the merchants of the sea-port towns. They had become highly 

 alarmed at the expansion of this fishery and trade; jealous of its 

 progress and clamorous at its endurance; they, therefore, of late 

 years, have repeatedly memorialized the government in England, 

 respecting the fisheries carried on by the Americans, while the 

 whole body of Scottish adventurers, whose trade both in import* 

 and exports, and control over the inhabitants it curtailed, have 

 turned out in full cry and joined the chorus of the colonial govern- 

 ments in a crusade against the encroachments of the infidels, the 

 disbelievers in the divine authority of kings, or the rights of the 

 provinces, and have pursued their objects so assiduously that at 

 their own expense, as I am informed from a respectaWe source, in 

 the year 1807 or 8, they stationed a watchman in some favourable 

 position near the Straits ofCanso, to count the number of American 

 vessels which passed those straits on this employment ; who re- 

 turned nine hundred and thirty -eight as the number actually ascer- 

 tained by him to have passed, and doubtless many others, during 

 the night or in stormy or thick weather, escaped his observation ;• 

 and some of these addressers have distinctly looked forward with 

 gratification to a state of war, as a desirable occurrence, which 

 would, by its existence, annul existing treaty stipulations, so inju- 

 rious, as they contend, to their interests and those of the nation. 

 With what degree of correctness this expectation has been enter 

 tained, the fiiture must determine ; but unfortunately these mur- 

 murs and complaints reached England, and were industriously cir- 

 culated about the time that our restrictive measures awakened an 

 unusual and critical attention to the commercial connection between 

 the two countries, and probably the value and importance of this 

 branch of it is now at least as fully understood and appreciated on 

 (he eastern as on the western side of the Atlantic. 



