1060 MISCELLANEOUS. 



on the Great Bank and Shores of Newfoundland. The French Gov- 

 ernment have at all periods duly estimated its importance. The 

 Americans, even before they were separated from the Government of 

 the Parent Country, but more particularly since, have lost no op- 

 portunity to extend the Fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and 

 on the Banks and Shores of Newfoundland. Your Committee 

 would conclude upon this head by referring to the opinion of cele- 

 brated French authority, (L'Abbe RaynalJ on the great value, in 

 a commercial and national point of view, of the Newfoundland 

 Fisheries. 



" The other Colonies, he says, have exhibited a series of injustice, 

 oppression and carnage, which will for ever be holden in detestation. 

 Newfoundland alone hath not offended against humanity nor injured 

 the rights of any other people. The other settlements have yielded 

 productions, only by receiving an equal value in exchange. New- 

 foundland alone hath drawn from the depths of the waters riches 

 formed by nature alone, and which furnishes subsistence to several 

 countries of both hemispheres. 



" How much time hath elapsed before this parallel hath been 

 made, of what importance did fish appear when compared to the 

 money which men went in search of in the new world. It was long 

 before it was understood, if even it be yet understood, that the rep- 

 resentation of the thing is not of greater value than the thing itself, 

 and that a ship filled with Cod and a Galleon are vessels equally 

 laden with Gold: there is even this remarkable difference, that 

 mines can be exhausted and the fisheries never are. Gold is not re- 

 productive, but the fish are so incessantly." 



Your Committee consider it necessary to explain the grounds on 

 which they refer to so many authorities to prove the value of the 

 Newfoundland fisheries. The proposition, as far as they could learn, 

 has never yet been questioned. They were induced to make these 

 references in consequence of the utter neglect with which these fish- 

 eries have been regarded by the British Government, since the peace 

 of 1814, on the one hand, and the avidity with which they were prose- 

 cuted by the French and American Governments since that period on 

 the other. " Great Britain, who owns, supports, and defends these 

 Colonies and Fisheries, and has derived from them the principal 

 means of defending herself, gave up, at the conclusion of the war, to 

 her vanquished opponents the most valuable portion of her Colonial 

 coasts and waters. To the French in 1814 she conceded the North 

 coast and Western coast of Newfoundland, from Cape St. John to 

 Cape Ray: to the Americans in 1818 she gave up the right of taking 

 fish on the Southern and Western coasts of the same Island, from the 

 Rameau Islands to Cape Ray and from Cape Ray to the Quirpon 

 Islands, to the Magdalen Islands, and on the whole coast of Labrador, 

 from Mount Jolly Northwards to the limits of Hudson's Bay, to- 

 gether with the liberty of using the unsettled parts of Labrador and 

 the Southern parts of Newfoundland, for drying and curing fish." 

 It cannot be questioned that Great Britain, by these concessions, ceded 

 to the French and the Americans the best fishing grounds ; and these 

 Governments, to make the most of these advantages, grant large 

 bounties for the encouragement of these fisheries, with the avowed 

 purpose of increasing their maritime strength. Your Committee 

 may therefore state that the Newfoundland fisheries, instead of being, 



