MISCELLANEOUS. 1287 



This despatch has been once quoted; but since it should be con- 

 tinually kept in view, it may be cited again: 



"DOWNING STREET, September 17, 1845. 



"Mr LORD: ***** Her Majesty's government have at- 

 tentively considered the representations contained in your despatches, 

 Nos. 324 and 331, of the 17th June and the 2d July, respecting the 

 policy of granting permission to the fisheries of the United States to 

 fish in the Bay of Chaleur, and other large bays of a similar character 

 on the coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; and, apprehending 

 from your statements that any such general concession would be inju- 

 rious to the interests of the British North American provinces, we 

 have abandoned the intention we entertained upon the subject, and 

 still adhere to the strict letter of the treaties which exist between 

 Great Britain and the United States, relative to the fisheries in North 

 America, except so far as they may relate to the Bay of Fundy, which 

 has been thrown open to the North Americans under certain restric- 

 tions." 



There are fish enough in the American seas for all who speak the 

 Saxon tongue for all of the Saxon stock. England, we may hope, 

 will not maintain a position so likely to produce troubles like those of 

 olden time which existed between us, as colonists, and the French, 

 and of which I have elsewhere spoken. Fishermen are but poor 

 interpreters of international law and of unreal and fictitious distinc- 

 tions. To them, the open sea, the great " bays, " are but one but a 

 continuous fishing ground; and few of them, I apprehend, will ever 

 see or respect the lines which colonial ingenuity nas "drawn from 

 headland to headland" of these "bays." 



I conclude the topic with expressing the conviction to which all 

 practical men will assent that, if the new construction of the conven- 

 tion of 1818 be persisted in and actually enforced, we shall lose quite 

 one-third of our cod and mackerel fisheries. Let not our colonial 

 brethern press us too far. Self-conquest is the noblest of all victories ; 

 and, in all kindness, let them be urged to subdue their hatred of "the 

 Yankees." The children of the whigs of a former day demand free 

 access to all the seas of British America. They require the use of 

 every sheet of sea-water six miles wide all around the colonial coasts 

 not oy courtesy, but as a matter of right; and they will be satisfied 

 with nothing less. The attempt to exclude them has already caused 

 much unneighborly feeling, and, if continued, will occasion wrangling 

 and quarrelling on the fishing grounds. The end, no one is wise 

 enougn to foresee. 



The colonists have toiled a whole generation to move the British 

 government to "protect them from the aggressions of the Americans. " 

 They have apparently, and for the moment, accomplished their object. 

 But will they themselves catch a fish the more, or become a single 

 guinea the richer, in consequence of the opinion of the crown lawyers 

 and of Lord Stanley's two despatches? They have achieved a state- 

 paper victory, at the expense of right and of humanity. Some of our 

 countrymen have neither the money nor the credit to procure and fit 

 out the class of vessels required in the Newfoundland and Labrador 

 fisheries, and are compelled by the necessities of their position and 

 condition to resort, in the smaller craft, to the coasts of New Bruns- 

 wick and Nova Scotia to earn subsistence. Exclusion to such, is a 



