MISCELLANEOUS. 1059 



mons, and the Minister of the day had to retire; however, the advan- 

 tages ceded to the French were confirmed. Lord Viscount Townshend 

 said " The admission of that Nation (the French) to a participa- 

 tion of the Newfoundland fisheries was a piece of the most dreadful 

 policy and concession that ever disgraced a nation." 



Mr. Fox said, " It was evident that our fisheries in Newfoundland, 

 so much boasted of, were in a manner annihilated, not to mention 

 the impolicy of ceding St. Pierre and Miquelon." 



Sir Peter Burrell said " Will any gentleman say that leaving 

 the Americans liberty to dry their fish on the unsettled coast of 

 Newfoundland was the way to prevent disputes: for his part he saw, 

 in the wording of the treaty, an eternal source of quarrels and dis- 

 putes; and when he considered the footing on which the Americans 

 are with the French, he was not without his apprehensions that the 

 right which the treaty granted to the latter to dry their fish on a 

 coast near 190 miles in length, would occasion various attempts to 

 bring in the Americans to this privilege." 



Lord Mulgrave, on the same occasion said " He considered the 

 Greenland fisheries much inferior to the Newfoundland fisheries." 

 Mr. Pitt expressed similar opinions. 



The great advantages, in a national point of view, of the New- 

 foundland fisheries, have been fully admitted by the most eminent 

 statesmen of a later period. On a motion proposed by Sir John 

 Newport in 1815, in which he expressed his views of the vast im- 

 portance of the fisheries of Newfoundland, Lord Castlereagh said 

 " He concurred with much of what had been said by the Right Hon. 

 Baronet as to the value of these Fisheries; he most completely co- 

 incided with him that they were not only valuable as a great source 

 of wealth to the country but they were still more so as a source of 

 maritime strength." 



The greatest of trade Ministers, the late lamented Mr. Huskisson, 

 in his celebrated speeches upon the Shipping Interests, Colonial 

 Trade and Navigation, never loses sight of the great importance of 

 the Fisheries. To the support of them, as a great source of the 

 maritime power of England, he assented to a deviation from the 

 great leading principles of his own commercial system. In that 

 eminent Statesman's speech on the Navigation Laws of the United 

 Kingdom, he says 



First of the Fisheries 



" The ocean is a common field alike open to all the people of the 

 earth ; its productions belong to no particular Nation. It was there- 

 fore our interest to take care that so much of those productions as 

 might be wanted for the consumption of Great Britain should be 

 exclusively procured by British industry and imported in British 

 ships. This is so simple and so reasonable a rule, that in this part 

 of our navigation system, no alteration whatever has been made, nor 

 do I believe that any ever will be contemplated." 



Sir Howard Douglas said that, " the Fisheries in the British 

 Quarters of America were the most productive in the world : if they 

 were not ours whose would they be? what would be the effect of the 

 total abandonment and transfer to another Power of this Branch of 

 Industry upon our Commercial marine and consequently upon our 

 naval ascendancy ? " 



Your Committee could without end produce authorities, both 

 British and Foreign, to prove the inestimable value of the fisheries 



