400 APPENDIX 



ultimo, containing the grounds upon which the United States conceive themselves, 

 at the present time, entitled to prosecute their fisheries within the limits of the British 

 sovereignty, and to use British territories for purposes connected with the fisheries. 



A pretension of this kind was certainly intimated on a former occasion, but in a 

 manner so obscure that His Majesty's Government were not enabled even to conjecture 

 the grounds upon which it could be supported. 



His Majesty's Government have not failed to give to the argument contained in 

 the letter of the 2Sth ultimo a candid and deliberate consideration; and, although 

 they are compelled to resist the claim of the United States, when thus brought forward 

 as a question of right, they feel every disposition to afford to the citizens of those 

 States all the liberties and privileges connected with the fisheries which can consist 

 with the just rights and interests of Great Britain, and secure His Majesty's subjects 

 from those undue molestations in their fisheries which they have formerly experienced 

 from citizens of the United States. The Minister of the United States appears, by 

 his letter, to be well aware that Great Britain has always considered the liberty formerly 

 enjoyed by the United States of fishing within British limits, and using British terri- 

 tory, as derived from the third article of the treaty of 1783, and from that alone; and 

 that the claim of an independent State to occupy and use at its discretion any portion 

 of the territory of another, without compensation or corresponding indulgence, cannot 

 rest on any other foundation than conventional stipulation. . It is unnecessary to 

 enquire into the motives which might have originally influenced Great Britain in 

 conceding such hberties to the United States, or whether other articles of the treaty 

 wherein these liberties are specified did, or did not, in fact, afford an equivalent for 

 them, because all the stipulations profess to be founded on reciprocal advantages and 

 mutual convenience. If the United States derived from that treaty privileges from 

 which other independent nations not admitted by treaty were excluded, the duration 

 of the privileges must depend on the duration of the instrument by which they were 

 granted; and if the war abrogated the treaty, it determined the privileges. It has 

 been urged, indeed, on the part of the United States, that the treaty of 1783 was of 

 a pecuUar character, and that, because it contained a recognition of American inde- 

 pendence, it could not be abrogated by a subsequent war between the parties. To a 

 position of this novel nature Great Britain cannot accede. She knows of no excep- 

 tion to the rule, that all treaties are put an end to by a subsequent war between the 

 same parties: she cannot, therefore, consent to give to her diplomatic relations with 

 one State a different degree of permanency from that on which her connection with all 

 other States depends. Nor can she consider any one State at liberty to assign to a 

 treaty made with her such a peculiarity of character as shall make it, as to duration, an 

 exception to all other treaties, in order to found, on a peculiarity thus assumed, an irrev- 

 ocable title to all indulgences, which have all the features of temporary concessions. 



The treaty of Ghent has been brought forward by the American Minister as sup- 

 porting, by its reference to the boundary line of the United States, as fixed by the 

 treaty of 1783, the opinion that the treaty of 1783 was not abrogated by the war. 

 The undersigned, however, cannot observe in any one of its articles any express or 

 implied reference to the treaty of 1783 as still in force. It will not be denied that 

 the main object of the treaty of Ghent was the mutual restoration of all territory taken 

 by either party from the other during the war. As a necessary consequence of such 

 a stipulation, each party reverted to their boundaries as before the war, without 

 reference to the title by which these possessions were acquired, or to the mode in which 

 their boundaries had been previously fixed. In point of fact, the United States had 



