fference,
with interest at four per cent.

CHAPTER III.

THE FISHERIES DISPUTE

[1783 ]

Our glance at the Treaty of Washington introduces us to an international
complication which has been transmitted from the very birthday of the
nation, and is, alas, still unsettled, spite of the earnest efforts to
this end made since 1885. Article 3 of the treaty of 1783 was as
follows: "It is agreed that the people of the United States shall
continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the
Grand Bank and on all the other banks of Newfoundland; also in the Gulf
of St. Lawrence and at all other places in the sea where the inhabitants
of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish; and also that the
inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty to take fish of
every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British
fishermen shall use [but not to dry or cure the same on that island];
and also on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of his Britannic
Majesty's dominions in America, and that the American fishermen shall
have liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors,
and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, so long as
the same shall remain unsettled; but so soon as the same, or either of
them, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to
dry or cure fish at such settlement without a previous agreement for
that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the
ground."

This provision conveyed to fishermen from the United States two valuable
privileges--that of fishing in British waters, namely, within three
miles of the British coast, and that of drying and curing fish, wherever
caught, upon certain convenient parts of the British coast. They had,
of course, like the men of all nations, apart from any treaty
stipulation, the right to fish outside the three mile limit, but this
would avail them nothing, under the then mode of conducting the
industry, unless they could freely make harbor in case of storm, and
also land to cure their catch before lading it for the homeward cruise.
What worth these rights had will be clear if we remember that fishing
had always been one of New England's foremost trades, and that the
waters off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia had from, and probably before,
Columbus's time been known as the richest fishing grounds of the globe.

[1812]

The commissioners at Ghent, who drew