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entirely, conducted by the people of New England alone. In colonial days fish was the chief staple commodity of New England, as tobacco was in Virginia. The fishing towns were thriving and populous, and, so far as the people on this continent were concerned, the fisheries on the shores of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the banks were to all intents and purposes the fisheries of New England. The shores immediately adjacent to the fisheries were sparsely peopled, and were used only in connection with the fisheries. Halifax itself was settled for the prosecution of the fisheries. Instead of the fisheries being an appurtenant to the neighboring coasts, the coasts, on the contrary, were entirely subservient to the fisheries, and were only used as an accommodation to their prosecution.

Sabine's Report on the Fisheries, pages 227, 237, 250, 261, 303, 390;

Haliburton's Nova Scotia, vol. i., pages 243, 261, 265.

Hon. Charles Levi Woodbury, in his "Headlands" pamphlet, in showing the distinct independence of the fisheries from the ownership of the soil of the coasts and the appurtenant subjection of the coast to the uses of the common fishery, says:

"This charter of William and Mary remained in force until the American Revolution, though Nova Scotia had soon passed under French rule. The appurtenant character of the British colonial coasts to these fisheries came in question after the Revolution, and the Treaty of 1783 evidently is based upon and recognizes this principle, that the fishery was not an appurtenant of the shore of the colonies remaining to Great Britain. It was not the main object of the treaty to give fishery rights to one not entitled previously thereto, but was to relieve the shores by contract of as much of these old uses as the second party was willing to relinquish of his own right therein. Thus while the United States yields the right to dry and cure fish on the shores of Newfoundland, it retains the right to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador; and where they are settled, to dry and cure with the consent of the inhabitants, proprietors of the grounds.".

An express recognition of our fishery rights was one of the ultimatums of peace at the close of the Revolutionary War,

but England naturally opposed this claim and resisted it to the

utmost.

‘Against the British draft of the article on the fisheries, John Adams, with the steady and efficient support of Franklin and of Jay, spoke with the more effect as it introduced an arbitrary restriction; and he declared he would not set his hand to the treaty unless the limitations were stricken out. After long altercations the article was reduced to the form in which it appears in the treaty, granting to the United States equal rights with the British fishermen to take fish on the coast of Newfoundland and on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other British dominions in America."

Bancroft's History of the U. S., vol. v, page 579.

"That third article was demanded as an ultimatum, and it was declared that no treaty of peace should ever be made without it, and when the British ministers found that peace could not be made without that article they consented, for Britain wanted peace, if possible, more than we did."

John Adams to William Thomas, Aug. 10th, 1822,
Adams' Works, vol. x, page 404.

The Continental Congress had by its resolution of May 27th, 1779, declared "that in no case by any Treaty of Peace the common right of fishing be given up.”

The writer of an article in a late number of the New York Tribune, giving a history of the American fishery rights, makes the following concise and clear statement of the position taken by the United States in the negotiations for peace at the close of the Revolution:

"In the negotiations for peace at the close of the Revolution, equal rights to the fisheries were imperatively demanded. The colonists were unwilling to make peace on any other terms. Mr. Livingston, Secretary of State, wrote to Dr. Franklin: 'If we were tenants in common with Great Britain while united with her, we still continue so, unless we have relinquished our title. Our rights are not invalidated by this separation, more particularly as we have kept up our claim from the commencement of the war, and assigned the attempt of Great Britain to exclude us from the fisheries as one of the causes of our recurring to arms.' The Continental Congress instructed John Adams by resolution 'that it is essential to the welfare of all the United States that the inhabitants thereof, at the expiration of the war, should continue to enjoy the free and undisturbed exercise of their common right to fish on the banks of Newfoundland and the other fishing banks and seas of North America, preserving in

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violate the treaties between France and the United States.' The original bases of peace proposed by Dr. Franklin were political independence, an adjustment of boundaries, and unrestricted rights to the fisheries; and these were adopted after a prolonged diplomatic struggle, notwithstanding hostile intrigues by France and Spain. John Adams was as inflexible in his refusal to conclude peace without obtaining explicit recognition of the fishing franchises, as Samuel Adams was intrepid and vehement in his declarations at Boston that war must be resumed if those rights were denied to New England. When the British Commissioners objected to the word 'right' in the fisheries clause, he indignantly exclaimed:"Is there or can there be a clearer right? In former treaties, that of Utrecht and that of Paris, France and England have claimed the right and used the word. * * * If heaven at the creation gave a right, it is ours at least as much as yours. If occupation, use, and possession give a right, we have it as clearly as you. If war, and blood, and treasure give a right, ours is as good as yours. We have been continuously fighting in Canada, Cape Breton, and Nova Scotia for the defense of this fishery, and have expended beyond all proportion more than you. If, then, the right cannot be denied, why should it not be acknowledged and put out of dispute? Why should we leave room for illiterate fishermen to wrangle and chicane?'

"Mr. Jay and Mr. Laurens, Associate American Commissioners, unequivocally supported Mr. Adams in his refusal to make peace unless the fisheries were included."

England finally yielded to our claim, and by the Treaty of Peace acknowledged our proprietary title or rights of ownership in the fisheries as well as our independence, and no corresponding rights were conferred upon or conceded to British subjects on the coasts of the United States.

Our title, therefore, under the Treaty of 1783 is one of joint ownership with the subjects of the British Crown, a title equal to and as good as theirs, appurtenant to our separate sovereignty declared and established by our War for Independence, and without any corresponding right on the part of British subjects on the coasts of the United States.

John Adams, in a letter to Richard Rush, dated April 5th, 1815 (Adams' Works, vol. x, page 160), said:

"2. We have a right (I know not very well how to express it) but we have the right of British subjects. Not that we are now British subjects; not that we were British subjects at the treaty of 1783, but as having been British subjects, and entitled to all the rights, liberties, privileges, and immunities of British subjects, which we had possessed before

the Revolution, which we never had surrendered, forfeited, or relinquished, and which we never would relinquish any farther than in that treaty is expressed, our right was clear and indubitable to fish in all places in the sea where British subjects had fished or ever had a right to fish.

"3. We have a stronger and clearer right to all these fisheries in their largest extent than any Britons or Europeans ever had or could have, for they were all indebted to us and our ancestors for all these fisheries. We discovered them; we explored them; we settled the country, at our own expense, industry, and labor, without assistance from Britain or from Europe. We possessed, occupied, exercised, and practiced them from the beginning. We have done more towards exploring the best fishing grounds and stations, and all the harbors, bays, inlets, creeks, coasts, and shores where fish were to be found, and had discovered by experiments the best means and methods for preserving, curing, drying, and perfecting the commodity, and done more towards perfecting the commerce in it, than all the Britons and all the rest of Europe.

"4. We conquered Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, dispossessed the French, both hostile and neutral, and did more, in proportion, towards the conquest of Canada than any other portion of the British empire; and would and could and should have done the whole, at an easier expense to ourselves, both of men and money, if the British government would have permitted that union of colonies which we projected, planned, earnestly desired, and humbly petitioned. In short, we had done more, in proportion, towards protecting and defending all these fisheries against the French than any other part of the British empire. For all these reasons, if there is a people under heaven who could advance a claim or a color of a pretension to any exclusive privileges in the fisheries, or any rights in our part of the old British empire more than another, that people are the inhabitants of the United States of America, especially of New England. But we set up no claims but those asserted and acknowledged in the treaty of 1783. These we do assert, and these we will have and maintain."

See also Letter R. R. Livingston to Benj. Franklin,
Jan. 7, 1782; Spark's Franklin, vol. 9, page 135.

In the treaty of peace made at Ghent between Great Britain and the United States, at the termination of the War of 1812, no reference is made to the fisheries. During the negotiation of that treaty Great Britain claimed that the fishing rights within the limits of British Sovereignty reserved to the United States in the Treaty of 1783 were annulled by the war;, Commissioner Goulding, one of the British Commissioners, stating that although it was not intended to contest the right of the United States to the fisheries, " yet, so far as respected the

concessions to land and dry fish within the exclusive jurisdiction of the British, it was proposed not to renew that without an equivalent."

Memoirs J. Q. Adams, vol. 2, page 6.

The United States maintained, however, that our fishery rights and liberties stood on the same foundation as our right to independence and our territory; that the Treaty of 1783 conveyed no new rights, but acknowledged and confirmed existing rights and liberties enjoyed before the War of Independence; that the treaty was the partition of an empire, and a perpetual agreement--one of those fundamental agreements incorporated into the very existence of the United States therefrom; and that our fishery rights and liberties were no more affected by the War of 1812 than our right of independence; that unlike another class of treaties, the Treaty of 1783 was to be regarded as perpetual and of the nature of a deed in which the fisheries were an appurtenant of the soil conveyed, and that, therefore, no stipulation was necessary to secure the perpetuity of the appendage more than of the territory itself.

Wheaton, in his International Law, gives the following account of the claim of Great Britain and the position of the United States:-

During the negotiation at Ghent, in 1814, the British plenipotentiaries gave notice that their government 'did not intend to grant to the United States, gratuitously, the privileges formerly granted by treaty to them of fishing within the limits of the British sovereignty, and of using the shores of the British territories for purposes connected with the British fisheries.' In answer to this declaration the American plenipotentiaries stated that they were not authorized to bring into discussion any of the rights or liberties which the United States have heretofore enjoyed in relation thereto; from their nature, and from the peculiar character of the treaty of 1783, by which they were recognized, no further stipulation has been deemed necessary by the Government of the United States to entitle them to the full enjoyment of them all.'

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"The treaty of peace concluded at Ghent, in 1814, therefore, contained no stipulation on the subject; and the British Government subsequently expressed its intention to exclude the American fishing vessels from the liberty of fishing within one marine league of the shores of the British territories in North America, and from that of drying and curing their fish on the unsettled parts of those territories, and, with the consent of

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