QUESTION SIX. 233 



which extends from Cape Ray eastward to the Rameau Islands," 

 and added: 



The advantages of this portion of the coast are accurately known 

 to the British Government; and in consenting to assign it to the uses 

 of the American fishermen, it was certainly conceived that an accom- 

 modation was afforded as ample as it was possible to concede, without 

 abandoning that control within the entire of His Majesty's own har- 

 bors and coasts which the essential interests of His Majesty's domin- 

 ions required. 



It is true that what Mr. Bagot had principally in mind was the 

 convenience to American fishermen of a more southern coast on which 

 to dry and cure fish. But it is equally true that he intended to 

 give the same privileges on this section of coast as he had offered 

 to give on the Labrador coast. The bays and harbors of the 

 Labrador coast were assigned for the purposes both of fishing and 

 curing fish, and there is no intimation that Mr. Bagot offered to 

 assign the southern coast of Newfoundland for any different or 

 more restricted purposes. He makes no reservations. Nowhere is 

 there the preposterous suggestion that Americans should have the 

 right to dry and cure fish on the shores of bays but that they 

 should not have the right to fish in the waters of such bays. 



The language of the treaty as finally agreed to was almost verbatim 

 that of the first draft prepared by Messrs. Gallatin and Rush and 

 submitted by them to the British representatives. That they in- 

 tended by it to be accorded more rather than less than had previously 

 been offered by Mr. Bagot, and that they were so understood by the 

 British negotiators, appears from the latter's report of their confer- 

 ence to Viscount Castlereagh : 



They [Messrs. Gallatin and Rush] added that while they could not 

 but regard the propositions made to the Government of the United 

 States by Mr. Bagot as altogether inadmissible, inasmuch as they 

 restricted the American fishing to a line of coast so limited, as to 

 exclude them from their fair participation, they had nevertheless 

 been anxious in securing to themselves an adequate extent of coast, 

 to guard against the inconveniences which they understood to con- 

 stitute the leading objection to the unlimited exercise of their -fishing. 

 With this view tliey had contented themselves with requiring a 

 further extent of coast, in those very quarters which Great Britain 

 had pointed out, because it appeared to them that the very small 

 population established in that quarter and the unfitness of the soil 

 for cultivation rendered it improbable that any conduct of the Amer- 

 ican fishermen in that quarter could either give rise to disputes with 

 the inhabitants, or to injuries to the revenue. 6 



U. S. Case, Appendix, 291. 6 British Case, Appendix, 86. 



