that line could be effected but by the express assent of the United States; and, when she finally determined to abide by the same line, neither the British nor the American plenipotentiaries conceived that any new confirmation of it was necessary. The treaty of Ghent, in every one of its essential articles, refers to that of 1783 as being still in full force. The object all its articles relative to the boundary, is to ascertain with more precision, and to carry into effect, the provisions of that prior compact. The treaty of 1783 is, by a tacit understanding between the parties, and without any positive stipulation, constantly referred to as the fundamental law of the relations between the two nations. Upon what ground, then, can Great Britain assume that one particular stipulation in that treaty is no longer binding upon her?

Upon this foundation, my Lord, the Government of the United States consider the people thereof as fully entitled, of right, to all the liberties in the North American fisheries which have always belonged to them; which, in the treaty of 1783, were, by Great Britain, recognised as belonging to them; and which they never have, by any act of theirs, consented to renounce. With these views, should Great Britain ultimately determine to deprive them of the enjoyment of these liberties by force, it is not for me to say whether, or for what length of time, they would submit to the bereavement of that which they would still hold to be their unquestionable right. It is my duty to hope that such measures will not be deemed necessary to be resorted to on the part of Great Britain; and to state that, if they should, they cannot impair the right of the people of the United States to the liberties in question, so long as no formal and express assent of theirs shall manifest their acquiescence in the privation.

In the interview with which your Lordship recently favoured me, I suggested several other considerations, with the hope of convincing your Lordship that, independent of the question of rigorous right, it would conduce to the substantial interests of Great Britain herself, as well as to the observance of those principles of benevolence and humanity which it is the highest glory of a great and powerful

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nation to respect, to leave to the American fishermen the participation of those benefits which the bounty of nature has thus spread before them; which are so necessary to their comfort and subsistence; which they have constantly enjoyed hitherto; and which, far from operating as an injury to Great Britain, had the ultimate result of pouring into her lap a great portion of the profits of their hardy and laborious industry; that these fisheries afforded the means of subsistence to a numerous class of people in the United States, whose habit of life had been fashioned to no other occupation, and whose fortunes had allotted them no other possession; that to another, and, perhaps, equally numerous class of our citizens, they afforded the means of remittance and payment for the productions of British industry and ingenuity, imported from the manufactures of this United Kingdom; that, by the common and received usages among civilised nations, fishermen were among those classes of human society whose occupations, contributing to the general benefit and welfare of the species, were entitled to a more than ordinary share of protection; that it was usual to spare and exempt them even from the most exasperated conflicts of national hostility; that this nation had, for ages, permitted the fishermen of another country to frequent

and fish upon the coasts of this island, without interrupting them, even in times of ordinary war; that the resort of American fishermen to the barren, uninhabited, and for the great part, uninhabitable rocks on the coasts of Nova Scotia, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Labrador, to use them occasionally for the only purposes of utility of which they are susceptible, if it must, in its nature, subject British fishermen on the same coasts to the partial inconvenience of a fair competition, yet produces, in its result, advantages to other British interests equally entitled to the regard and fostering care of their Sovereign. By attributing to motives derived from such sources as these the recognition of these liberties by His Majesty's Government in the treaty of 1783, it would be traced to an origin certainly more conformable to the fact, and surely more honourable to Great Britain, than by ascribing it to the improvident grant of an unrequited privilege, or to a concession extorted from the humiliating compliance of necessity.

In repeating, with earnestness, all these suggestions, it is with the hope that from some, or all of them, His Majesty's Government will conclude the justice and expediency of leaving the North American fisheries in the state in which they have heretofore constantly existed, and the fishermen of the United States unmolested in the enjoyment of their liberties.

*

No. 19.-1815, October 30: Letter from Lord Bathurst to Mr. Adams. FOREIGN OFFICE, October 30, 1815.

The undersigned, one of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, had the honour of receiving the letter of the Minister of the United States, dated the 25th 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 25th 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 territory, 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 liberties 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 peculiar character, and that, because it contained a recognition of American independence, 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 exception 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 irrevocable title to all indulgences, which have all the features of temporary concessions.

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The treaty of Ghent has been brought forward by the American Minister as supporting, 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 before acquired possession of territories asserted to depend on other titles than those which Great Britain could confer. The treaty of Ghent, indeed, adverted, as a fact of possession, to certain boundaries of the United States which were specified in the treaty of 1783; but surely it will not be contended that therefore the treaty of 1783 was not considered at an end. It is justly stated by the American Minister that the United States did not need a new grant of the boundary line. The war did not arise out of a contested boundary; and Great Britain, therefore, by the act of treating with the United States, recognised that nation in its former dimensions, excepting so far as the jus belli had interfered with them; and it was the object of the treaty of Ghent to cede such rights to territory as the jus belli had conferred.

Still less does the free navigation of the Mississippi, as demanded by the British negotiators at Ghent, in any manner express or imply the non-abrogation of the treaty of 1783 by the subsequent war. It was brought forward by them as one of many advantages which they were desirous of securing to Great Britain; and if in the first instance demanded without equivalent, it left it open to the negotiators of the United States to claim for their Government, in the course of their conferences, a corresponding benefit. The American Minister will recollect that propositions of this nature were at one time under discussion, and that they were only abandoned at the time that Great Britain relinquished her demand to the navigation of the Mississippi. If, then, the demand on the part of Great Britain can be supposed to have given any weight to the present argument of the United States, the abandonment of that demand must have effectually removed it.

It is by no means unusual for treaties containing recognitions and acknowledgments of title, in the nature of perpetual obligation, to contain, likewise, grants of privileges liable to revocation. The treaty of 1783, like many others, contained provisions of different characters some in their own nature irrevocable, and others of a temporary nature. If it be thence inferred that, because some advantages specified in that treaty would not be put an end to by the war, therefore all the other advantages were intended to be equally permanent, it must first be shown that the advantages themselves are of the same, or at least of a similar character; for the character of one advantage recognised or conceded by treaty can have no connection with the character of another, though conceded by the same instrument, unless it arises out of a strict and necessary connection between the advantages themselves. But what necessary connection can there be between a right to independence and a liberty to fish within British jurisdiction, or to use British territory? Liberties within British limits are as capable of being exercised by a dependent, as by an independent State, and cannot, therefore, be the necessary consequence of independence.

The independence of a State is that which cannot be correctly said to be granted by a treaty, but to be acknowledged by one. In the treaty of 1783, the independence of the United States was certainly acknowledged, not merely by the consent to make the treaty, but by the previous consent to enter into the provisional articles executed in November, 1782. The independence might have been acknowledged, without either the treaty or the provisional articles; but, by whatever mode acknowledged, the acknowledgment is, in its own nature, irrevocable. A power of revoking, or even of modifying it, would be destructive of the thing itself; and, therefore, all such power is necessarily renounced when the acknowledgment is made. The war could not put an end to it, for the reason justly assigned by the American Minister, because a nation could not forfeit its Sovereignty by the act of exercising it; and for the further reason, that Great Britain, when she declared war on her part against the United States, gave them, by that very act, a new recognition of their independence.

The nature of the liberty to fish within British limits, or to use British territory, is essentially different from the right to independence, in all that may reasonably be supposed to regard its intended

duration. The grant of this liberty has all the aspect of a policy temporary and experimental, depending on the use that might be made of it, on the condition of the islands and places where it was to be exercised, and the more general conveniences or inconveniences, in a military, naval, or commercial point of view, resulting from the access of an independent nation to such islands and places.

When, therefore, Great Britain, admitting the independence of the United States, denies their right to the liberties for which they now contend, it is not that she selects from the treaty, articles, or parts of articles, and says, at her own will, this stipulation is liable to forfeiture by war, and that it is irrevocable; but the principle of her reasoning is, that such distinctions arise out of the provisions them-* selves, and are founded on the very nature of the grants. But the rights acknowledged by the treaty of 1783 are not only distinguishable from the liberties conceded by the same treaty, in the foundation upon which they stand, but they are carefully distinguished 71 in the treaty of 1783 itself. The undersigned begs to call the attention of the American Minister to the wording of the first and third articles, to which he has often referred, for the foundation of his arguments. In the first article, Great Britain acknowledges an independence already expressly recognised by the Powers of Europe and by herself, in her consent to enter into provisional articles of November 1782. In the third article, Great Britain acknowledges the right of the United States to take fish on the banks of Newfoundland and other places, from which Great Britain has no right to exclude an independent nation. But they are to have the liberty to cure and dry them in certain unsettled places within His Majesty's territory. If these liberties, thus granted, were to be as perpetual and indefeasible as the rights previously recognised, it is difficult to conceive that the plenipotentiaries of the United States would have admitted a variation of language so adapted to produce a different impression; and, above all, that they should have admitted so strange a restriction of a perpetual and indefeasible right as that with which the article concludes, which leaves a right so practical and so beneficial as this is admitted to be, dependent on the will of British subjects, in their character of inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the soil, to prohibit its exercise altogether.

It is surely obvious that the word right is, throughout the treaty, used as applicable to what the United States were to enjoy, in virtue of a recognised independence; and the word liberty to what they were to enjoy, as concessions strictly dependent on the treaty itself. The right of the United States has been asserted upon other arguments, which appear to the undersigned not altogether consistent with those that had been previously advanced. It has been argued by the Minister of the United States that the treaty of 1783 did not confer upon the United States the liberty of fishing within British jurisdiction, and using British territory, but merely recognised a right which they previously had; and it has been thence inferred that the recognition of this right renders it as perpetual as that of their independence.

If the treaty of 1783 did not confer the liberties in question, the undersigned cannot understand why, in their support, the point should have been so much pressed, that the treaty is in force notwithstanding the subsequent war. If, as stated by the American Minister,