WAK AND ITS RESULTS 127 



of Paris France and England have claimed the right and 

 used the word. When God Almighty made the banks of 

 Newfoundland, at three hundred leagues distant from the 

 people of America, and at six hundred leagues distant 

 from those of France and England, did He not give us 

 as good a right as to the latter? If Heaven, at creation, 

 gave a right, it is ours at least as much as yours. If 

 occupation, use and possession give a right, we have it 

 as clearly as you. If war and blood and treasure give a 

 right, ours is as good as yours. We have been continuously 

 fighting in Canada, Cape Breton, and Nova Scotia for the 

 defense of this fishery, and have expended beyond all pro- 

 portion more than you. If then, the right cannot be de- 

 nied, why should it not be acknowledged and put out of 

 dispute? Why should we leave room for illiterate fish- 

 ermen to wrangle and chicane ? ' ' * 



The argument presented by Adams was unanswerable. 

 Eventually the whole of his proposal was embodied as an 

 article in the treaty of peace that was signed September, 

 3, 1783. Article III of that treaty follows : 



"It is agreed that the people of the United States shall con- 

 tinue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind 

 on the Grand Bank, and on the other banks of Newfoundland; 

 also in the Gulph of Saint Lawrence, and at all other places in 

 the sea where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time 

 heretofore to fish. And also that the inhabitants of the United 

 States shall have liberty to take fish of every kind on such part 

 of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use 

 (but not to dry or cure the same on that island) and also on 

 the coasts, bays and creeks of all other of His Britannic 

 Majesty's dominions in America; and that the American fisher- 

 men shall have liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled 

 bays, harbours and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and 

 Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but so 



i Works of J. Adams, III, p. 334. 



