1084 MISCELLANEOUS. 



the King of France on a portion of the coast necessarily remained an 

 exclusive right in the absence of any express provision to the con- 

 trary. Further, that in the negotiations at Versailles in 1782-83 

 the English negotiators, by an appeal to the moderation of the Court 

 of Versailles, succeeded in obtaining, not any admission of a concur- 

 rent right of fishery, but an abandonment by France of fishing 

 rights on part of the coasts on which British subjects had encroached, 

 in exchange for exactly similar rights on an equivalent portion of the 

 coast elsewhere. That in the negotiations for the Peace of Amiens 

 of 1802 the Cabinet of Paris had thought it would be desirable to 

 establish the French right to exclusive fishery by a modification of 

 Article XIII of the Treaty of Utrecht, but that Mr. Fox did not con- 

 sider such an amendment opportune, and urged that it would be 

 sufficient to return purely and simply to the text of 1783, as the 

 British Government had never' questioned the French right to 

 exclusive fishery. 



This train of reasoning presents a historical view of the subject 

 which is entirely at variance with the information in the possession 

 of Her Majesty's Government. I have thought it would contribute 

 to the elucidation of the subject that the several points wlii- h I have 

 briefly recapitulated above should be examined in detail by the 

 light of the authentic records at the disposal of this Department and 

 the Colonial Office, and the result 01 this examination has been 

 embodied in a Memorandum of which I inclose copies, and to which 

 I request your Excellency's attention. 



You will find what appears to Her Majesty's Government to be 

 indisputable evidence that the sovereignty of Newfoundland has 

 from the earliest times belonged to the British Crown, and that the 

 interests of France were limited to the possession of Placentia, and 

 to temporary occupancy by conquest or settlement of certain por- 

 tions 01 the adjacent coast. All these interests were abandoned by 

 the Treaty of Utrecht, which stipulated that no claim of right should 

 ever henceforward be advanced on behalf of France, and that it 

 should be allowed to her subjects to catch fish and dry them only on 

 land on a certain specified portion of the coast. The concurrent 

 right of British subjects to fish off this part of the coast was undoubt- 

 edly asserted and put in practice subsequent to the Treaty, and not 

 later than 1766, and a short time afterwards it began to give rise to 

 repeated complaints from the French Government, not on the 

 ground that it was in itself contrary to the Treaty, but because of 

 the manner in which it was exercised, which was said in many cases 

 practically to derogate from and annul the liberty of fishery accorded 

 to the French. The arrangements made at Versailles in 1783 were 

 not obtained by appeals to the moderation of the French Govern- 

 ment with the view of obtaining concurrent rights of fishery for 

 British subjects, but were the outcome of negotiations in which the 

 French Plenipotentiary endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to obtain 

 the explicit concession of an exclusive right of fishery for the French. 



It is no doubt by an accidental error merely that Mr. Fox, who 

 was Secretary of State during the latter portion of these nego- 

 tiations, is mentioned by your Excellency as having given certain 

 assurances during the later negotiations for the Treaty of Amiens in 

 1802, when he was not a member of the Government. But I have 

 been unable to discover, either in the instructions of Lord Hawkes- 



