MISCELLANEOUS. 1135 



At the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, it was stipulated that mutual 

 restitution should be made of all conquests during the war; and, 

 much to the dissatisfaction of the English colonists, Nova Scotia 

 returned once more to the undisputed possession of the French. The 

 strife in America had been avowedly for the fisheries, and for territory 

 north and west; and this treaty, which, with the exception of the 

 eastern half of Newfoundland, secured to France the whole coasts, 

 the islands, and the fishing-grounds from Maine to beyond Labrador 

 and Hudson's Bay, besides Canada and the valley of the Mississippi, 

 was regarded as dishonorable to England and wantonly injurious to 

 colonial industry and peace. 



The evil consequences of the treaty of Ryswick were soon manifest. 

 A year had not elapsed before the French government promulgated a 

 claim to the sole ownership of the fisheries.- In 1698, a frigate bound 

 from France to Nova Scotia furnished the master of a Massachusetts 

 vessel with a translated order from the king, which authorized the 

 seizure of all vessels not of the French flag that should be found fish- 

 ins: on the coast. General publicity of the order followed, and its exe- 

 cution was rigidly enforced. Bonaventure, in the ship-of-war Enviux, 

 boarded and sent home every English colonial vessel that appeared on 

 his cruising-ground ; while Villabon, governor of Nova Scotia, in an 

 official despatch to the executive of Massachusetts, declared that in- 

 structions from his royal master demanded of him the seizure of every 

 American fisherman that ventured east of the Kennebeck river, in 

 Maine. The claim was monstrous. If I understand its extent, the 

 only fisheries which were to be open and free to vessels of the English 

 flag were those westerly from the Kennebeck to Cape Cod, and those of 

 the western half of Newfoundland. It seems never to have occurred 

 to a single French statesman that the supply of fish in our seas is 

 inexhaustible, and that, reserving certain and sufficient coasts for the 

 exclusive use of their own people, other coasts might have been 

 secured to their rivals, without injury to any, and with advantage to 

 all. In fact, evidence that such a plan was suggested by our fathers, 

 or by the ministry "at home," does not, I think, exist. On both sides 

 the strife was for the monopoly and for the mastery. 



Richard, Earl Bellamont, arrived in Boston in 1699,* and, having 

 assumed the administration of affairs in Massachusetts, pointedly re- 

 ferred to these pretensions in a speech to the general court, and to the 

 execrable treachery of the Stuart who had parted last with Nova 

 Scotia and "the noble fishery on its coast." But his lordship could 

 afford no redress. 



In the first year of the reign of Queen Anne, the two nations were 

 again involved in war. Among its causes was the claim of France to a 

 part of Maine and to the whole of the fishing-grounds. The people of 

 New England, driven from the Acadian seas by the common enemy, 

 needed no solicitation from the mother country to engage heartily in 



* It was a new thing to see a nobleman at the head of the government of Massachu- 

 setts, and he was received with the greatest respect. "Twenty companies of soldiers 

 and a vast concourse of people met his lordship and the countess, and there was fire- 

 work and good drink all night." He died in New York in 1701. He was an enemy of 

 the Stuarts. 



