320 BALCH— THE AMERICAN-BRITISH [April 22, 



national arbitration. In the following paper, I have briefly con- 

 sidered this important and live question. 



Great Britain and her North American colonies shared in the 

 burdens and anxieties of the struggle that resulted in the overthrow 

 of the French power in North America, and after the cession of 

 Canada and the French maritime provinces around the Gulf of Saint 

 Lawrence to the British Empire in 1763, the motherland of England 

 and the British North American colonies had in common a large 

 heritage in northeastern America. And the fishermen of the north- 

 eastern colonies resorted to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and adja- 

 cent waters to catch their share of the rich harvest of fish that was 

 to be found in those waters.^ 



During the negotiations for peace at Paris in 1782 between the 

 motherland and her revolted colonies, one of the subjects that gave 

 much cause of trouble to the negotiators was the right to participate 

 in the fisheries. On November 25, 1782, the British commissioners 

 proposed to the American negotiators that the citizens of the United 

 States should have the liberty of taking fish of every kind in all the 

 waters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and on all the Newfoundland 

 banks, and to dry and cure fish on the shores of the Isle of Sables 

 and of the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, so long 

 as those coasts remained unsettled, on " condition that the citizens 

 of the United States do not exercise the fishery but at the distance of 

 three leagues from all the coasts belonging to Great Britain, as well 

 those of the continent as those of the islands situated in the Gulf 

 of Saint Lawrence. And as to what relates to the fishery on the 

 coast of the island of Cape Breton out of the said gulf, the citizens 

 of the said United States shall not be permitted to exercise the said 

 fishery but at the distance of fifteen leagues from the coasts of the 

 island of Cape Breton. "^ 



By this proposition not only were American citizens prevented 



^ Sir George Otto Trevelyan, " The American Revolution," New York, 

 1899, Part I., pp. 263, 264. 



'^ Francis Wharton, " The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of 

 the United States," Washington, 1889, Vol. VI., pp. 74-76. 



