CORRESPONDENCE 409 



pendence, is evident; for, in the cession ctf Nova Scotia by France to Great Britain, 

 in the twelfth article of the treaty of Utrecht, it was expressly stipulated that, as a 

 consequence of that cession, French subjects should be thenceforth "excluded from 

 all kind of fishing in the said seas, bays, and other places on the coasts of Nova Scotia; 

 that is to say, on those which lie towards the east, within thirty leagues, beginning 

 from the island commonly called Sable, inclusively, and thence stretching along towards 

 the southwest." The same exclusion was repeated, with some slight variation, in 

 the treaty of peace of 1763; and, in the eighteenth article of the same treaty, Spain 

 explicitly renounced all pretensions to the right of fishing "in the neighborhood of 

 the Island of Newfoundland." It was not, therefore, as a necessary result of their 

 independence that Great Britain recognized the right of the people of the United States 

 to fish on the banks of Newfoundland, in the "Gulf of St. Lawrence," and at all other 

 places in the sea where "the inhabitants of both countries used, at any time there- 

 tofore, to fish." She recognized it, by a special stipulation, as a right which they had 

 theretofore enjoyed as a part of the British nation, and which, as an independent 

 nation, they were to continue to enjoy unmolested; and it is well known that, so far 

 from considering it as recognized by virtue of her acknowledgment of independence, 

 her objections to admitting it at all formed one of the most prominent difficulties in 

 the negotiation of the peace of 1783. It was not asserted by the undersigned, as 

 Lord Bathurst's note appears to suppose, that either the right or the hberty of the 

 people of the United States in these fisheries was indefeasible. It was maintained 

 that, after the recognition of them by Great Britain, in the treaty of 1783, neither 

 the right nor the liberty could be forfeited by the United States, but by their own 

 consent; that no act or declaration of Great Britain alone could divest the United 

 States of them; and that no exclusion of them from the enjoyment of either could 

 be valid, unless expressly stipulated by themselves, as was done by France in the 

 treaty of Utrecht, and by France and Spain in the peace of 1763. 



The undersigned is apprehensive, from the earnestness with which Lord Bathurst's 

 note argues to refute inferences which he disclaims, from the principles asserted in 

 his letter to his Lordship, that he has not expressed his meaning in terms sufficiently 

 clear. He affirmed that, previous to the independence of the United States, their 

 people, as British subjects, had enjoyed all the rights and liberties in the fisheries, 

 which form the subject of the present discussion; and that, when the separation of 

 the two parts of the nation was consummated, by a mutual compact, the treaty of 

 peace defined the rights and liberties which, by the stipulation of both parties, the 

 United States, in their new character, were to enjoy. By the acknowledgment of 

 the independence of the United States, Great Britain bound herself to treat them, 

 thenceforward, as a nation possessed of all the prerogatives and attributes of sovereign 

 power. The people of the United States were, thenceforward, neither bound in alle- 

 giance to the sovereign of Great Britain, nor entitled to his protection, in the enjoy- 

 ment of any of their rights, as his subjects. Their rights and their duties, as members 

 of a State, were defined and regulated by their own constitutions and forms of govern- 

 ment. But there were certain rights and liberties which had been enjoyed by both 

 parts of the nation, while subjects of the same Sovereign, which it was mutually agreed 

 they should continue to enjoy unmolested; and, among them, were the rights and 

 liberties in these fisheries. The fisheries on the Banks of Newfoundland, as well in 

 the open seas as in the neighboring bays, gulfs, and along the coasts of Nova Scotia 

 and Labrador, were, by the dispensations and the laws of nature, in substance, only 

 different parts of one fishery. Those of the open sea were enjoyed not as a common 



