lis 



ties to vessels employed in the cod and whale fisheries, repealed the 

 duty payable on the importation of seai-skins, and abolished some other 

 restrictions, particularly in Ireland; passed the Commons on the 17th 

 of May, and the Lords five days afterwards. That this act was de- 

 vised in consequence of the suspension and ruin of the New England 

 fisheries, and as the means to stimulate English merchants and fisher- 

 men to supply the domestic and foreign markets, cannot be doubted. 



To retahate upon the ministry, the colonies, by their congress of deler 

 gates, strictly prohibited the supplying of British vessels coming to the 

 American coasts to engage in fishing, with any kind of provisions of 

 outfits. • 



I have said that the object ot Lord North's bill to restrain Massa- 

 chusetts, New Hampshire, Comiecticut and Rhode Island, from car- 

 rying on any fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland, and other places, 

 was to "starve them into submission." The sentiments uttered in 

 Parliament, and the facts derived from other sources, shoAv this top 

 jplainly to be mistaken. Nor was the opinion that the people of these 

 colonies, deprived of their most important maritime employment, would 

 yield to the blow, confined to British statesmen. Reference to the letter 

 of Silas Deane to the "Secret Committee of Congress," dated at 

 Paris, in July, 1776, wiU show that the French ministry, of whom he 

 solicited aid, in his public capacity, were impressed with the idea that 

 •' submission" was not an improbable result. Mr. Deane, in this letter, 

 details at some length the occurrences of an interview with Count de 

 Vergennes, the Principal Minister of State, and says, in the course of 

 the narrative: "He asked me many questions with respect to the colo- 

 nies ; but what he seemed most to want to be assured of, wiis their ability ii> 

 subsist without their Jisheries, and under the interruption of their cohir 

 bierce. To this I replied, that the fisheries were never carried on bui 

 by a part of the colonies, and by them not so much as a means of sub^ 

 sistence as of commerce ; that the fisheries failing, those employed ih 

 them turned part to agriculture and a part to the army and navy." 



Rejoicing now in our strength and prosperity, we can afford to smile 

 at the inhumanity and cool contempt manifested in Parliament by Jen- 

 kinson and Dundas, by thfeir lordships Dudley and Sandwich, and his 

 Grace of Grafton. And since, too, the untiring labors of Mr. Sparks 

 liave explained the enigma of Lord North's course on American affairs* 

 we may qualify our repiroaches upJon his memory. * The oppressors 

 ^nd the oppressed have disappeared, and repose in the grave ; but the 

 •warning may still go out for some living men to heed, that to drive 

 fishermen from the ocean is an outrage. 



*The " Extracts from the letters of George the Third to Lordlforth, selected by hoti 

 Holland from the ttianuscripts of Sir James Macintosh," which are to te found in the Ap- 

 pendix of the sixth volmne of Sparks's Washington, show that the popular opinion, that Lord 

 North was the author of the war and its constant adrofeate, is wholly erroneous. 



