MISCELLANEOUS. 1147 



"The King of Great Britain cedes the islands of St. Pierre and 

 Miquelon, in full right, to his Most Christian Majesty, to serve as 

 shelter to the French fishermen; and his said Most Christian Majesty 

 engages not to fortify the said islands, to erect no buildings upon 

 them but merely for the convenience of the fishery, and to keep upon 

 them a guard of fifty men only for the police/ 7 



These stipulations were severely attacked in Parliament and else- 

 where. "Junius," in his celebrated letter to the Duke of Bedford, 

 does not scruple to charge his grace with bribery. "Belleisle, Goree, 

 Guadaloupe, St. Lucia, Martinique, the fishery, and the Havana," 

 said he, "are glorious monuments of your grace's talents for nego- 

 tiation. My lord, we are too well acquainted with your pecuniary 

 character to think it possible that so many public sacrifices should have 

 been made without some private compensations. Your conduct carries 

 with it an internal evidence beyond all the legal proofs of a court of 

 'justice." 



Peace had hardly been concluded before the French were accused of 

 violations of the treaty. In 1764, a sloop-of-war carried intelligence to 

 England that they had a very formidable naval force at Newfound- 

 land; that they intended to erect strong fortifications on St. Peter's; 

 and that the English commodore on the station was without force suf- 

 ficient to prevent the consummation of their plans. The party 

 opposed to the ministry pronounced a warwithFrance to be inevitable, 

 unless the British government were disposed to surrender both New- 

 foundland and Canada. The alarm which illustrates the spirit of 

 the time, and the sensibility of the English people proved to be with- 

 out cause, since the French governor gave assurances that nothing had 

 been or would be done contrary to the letter of the treaty; that he 

 had but a single small cannon mounted, without a platform, designed 

 merely to answer signals to their fishermen in foggy weather; that 

 no buildings or works had been erected; and that his guard con- 

 sisted of only forty-seven men. It appeared, however, that the 

 French naval force was considerable, consisting of one ship of fifty 

 guns, another of twenty-six guns, and others of smaller rates. 



Remarking that the French employed at Newfoundland two hun- 

 dred and fifty-nine vessels in 1768, and about the same number five 

 years later, we come to the war of our own Revolution. To induce 

 France to aid us in the struggle, our envoys were authorized, in 

 1776, to stipulate that all the trade between the United States and 

 the French West Indies should be carried on either in French or 

 American vessels: and they were specially instructed to assure his 

 Most Christian Majesty, that if, by their joint efforts, the British should 

 be excluded from any share in the cod-fisheries of America by the 

 reduction of the islands of Newfoundland and Cape Breton, and 

 ships-of-war should be furnished, at the expense of the United States, 

 to reduce Nova Scotia, the fisheries should be enjoyed equally between 

 them, to the exclusion of all other nations; and that one-half of New- 

 foundland should belong to France, and the other half, with Cape 

 Breton and Nova Scotia, to the United States. 



We may smile at we can hardly commend our fathers for claim- 

 ing so large a share as this notable scheme devised; but the spirit 

 which conceived and was prepared to execute so grand an enterprise, 

 additional to the main purposes of their strife with the mother country, 

 is to be placed in strong contrast with the indifference manifested now 



