INTRODUCTION xxxvii 



I 

 tants of the United States, may be very conducive to their national 

 and individual prosperity, though they should be placed under some 

 modifications; and this feeling operates most forcibly in favor of con- 

 cession. But Great Britain can only offer the concession in a way 

 which shall effectually protect her own subjects from such obstructions 

 to their lawful enterprises as they too frequently experienced immedi- 

 ately previous to the late war, and which are, from their very nature, 

 calculated to produce collision and disunion between the two states." 



In the next paragraph of his note Lord Bathurst states the griev- 

 ances of the British Government in the matter of fishing. "It was 

 not," he said, "of fair competition that His Majesty's Government 

 had reason to complain, but of the preoccupation of British harbors and 

 creeks, in North America, by the fishing vessels of the United States, 

 and the forcible exclusion of British vessels from places where the 

 fishery might be most advantageously conducted. They had, likewise, 

 reason to complain of the clandestine introduction of prohibited goods 

 into the British colonies by American vessels ostensibly engaged in 

 fishing trade, to the great injury of the British revenue." 



From these passages it is evident that Great Britain was willing to 

 admit the Americans to participate in the fisheries not as a matter of 

 right, but as a "matter of concession," and that the liberty to be enjoyed 

 by the Americans should be so defined and limited as to prevent the mis- 

 understandings and embarrassments which had previously existed. 



It is also evident that Lord Bathurst contemplated a change in the 

 territorial limits within which American fishermen might prosecute 

 their industry in order to prevent the preoccupation of the British har- 

 bors and creeks "and the forcible exclusion of British vessels from 

 places where the fishery might be most advantageously conducted," 

 and that Americans engaged in fishing were to be confined to fishing and 

 not to be permitted to introduce "goods into the British colonies by 

 American vessels ostensibly engaged in the fishing trade, to the great 

 injury of the British revenue." The United States naturally wished a 

 confirmation of the liberty to take, dry, and cure fish in accordance with 

 the terms of the Treaty of 1783. The exchange of views between the 

 two governments had shown this to be impossible, and the United 

 States, therefore, aimed to retain as large a part of the liberties as pos- 

 sible, insisting that the liberties to be secured should be perpetual in 

 the sense that they were to be unaffected by future war between the two 

 countries. The fundamental purpose of Great Britain seems to have 

 been to reduce the limits within British jurisdiction in which the 

 inhabitants of the United States might carry on their fishing operations 



