States, to the effect that war does not, as an absolute, universal rule, abrogate existing treaties, regardless of their tenor and particular contents; and it is the only doctrine compatible with reason, justice, common, sense, and the diplomatic history of Europe.

But the British Government, in the celebrated dispatch to Mr. Adams of October 30, 1815, signed by Lord Bathurst, and understood to be the composition of Mr. Canning, declared the position of Great Britain to be: "She knows no exception to the rule that all treaties are put an end to by a subsequent war between the same parties." This proposition, in its absoluteness of expression, if it is intended as an assertion of any established practice of nations, or any recognized doctrine of the law of nations, is unfounded and unauthorized. Many treaties are made precisely for the case of war, and only become efficacious in virtue of the existence of war. The assertion of Lord Bathurst is altogether too broad, as Dr. Bluntschli demonstrates.

Nevertheless, acting on such extreme premises, Great Britain pretended that our rights of fishery had been abrogated by the war, and were not revived by peace; and that this effect was the true interpretation of the omission to mention the subject in the Treaty of Ghent.

The Commissioners of the United States who ne gotiated the Treaty of Ghent were men of unquestionable patriotism and of the highest character and intelligence: it would be out of place here to reopen the dispute as to certain special causes of the failure

of the Commissioners to secure in that treaty recog nition of the fishery rights of the United States. But it is due to the memory of the American Commissioners, and especially to Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Bayard, to say that, in all the negotiation at Ghent, they and their associates were hampered by the discouraged state of mind of the American Government, embarrassed, as it was, by political difficulties at home, and alarmed, if not terrified, by the triumph of Great Britain in Spain and France, and the total overthrow of Napoleon, which seemed to leave the British Government free to dispatch overwhelming forces of sea and land against the United States.

The autumn subsequent to those events was the darkest period in the history of the country. Nothing but the shock produced by the great change in the whole face of affairs in Europe could have extorted from the American Government those final instructions to our Commissioners, which authorized them to agree to the status quo ante bellum as the basis of negotiation, which spoke of our right to the fisheries, and of our foreign commerce, in equivocal terms,— and which, indeed, left the Commissioners free to conclude such a treaty as their own judgment should approve under existing circumstances, provided only they saved the rights of the United States as an inde pendent nation.

How different might and would have been those instructions, had the Government but struggled on a little longer against the adverse circumstances of the hour! Courage and procrastination would have made

us masters of the situation, and enabled us to dictate terms to Great Britain.

Remember that the Treaty of Ghent was signed on the 24th of December, 1814, and that the disastrous defeat of the British forces attacking New Orleans occurred a fortnight afterward, on the 8th of January, 1815. This event, if the negotiation at Ghent had remained open, could not but have strengthened the American Government; and, two months later, all the difficulties in its path would have been removed by the landing of Napoleon at Golf Jouan [March 1, 1815] and the renewal of the war in Europe.

But the pretension of Great Britain, that the war had abrogated any part of the Treaty of Independence, was evidently untenable; and the justice of the cause of the United States was so manifest that, after three or four years of discussion, the British Government agreed to the express recognition. of our fishery rights as follows [Treaty of October 20, 1818]:

"Whereas differences have arisen respecting the liberty claimed by the United States, for the inhabitants thereof, to take, dry, and cure fish on certain coasts, bays, harbors, and creeks of His Britannic Majesty's dominions in America, it is agreed between the high contracting parties that the inhabitants of the said United States shall have, forever, in common with the subjects of His Britannic Majesty, the liberty to take fish of every kind on that part of the southern coast of Newfoundland which extends from Cape Ray to the Rameau Islands, on the western and northern coast of Newfoundland from the said Cape Ray to the Quirpon Islands, on the shores of the Magdalen Islands, and also on the coasts, bays, harbors, and creeks from Mount Joly, on the southern coast of Labrador, to and through the Straits of Belleisle, and thence north

wardly indefinitely along the coast, without prejudice, however, to any of the exclusive rights of the Hudson's Bay Company. And that the American fishermen shall also have liberty, forever, to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of the southern part of the coast of Newfoundland, hereabove described, and of the coast of Labrador; but so soon as the same, or any portion thereof, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such portion so settled, without previous agreement for such purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground. And the United States hereby renounce, forever, any liberty heretofore enjoyed or claimed by the inhabitants thereof to take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors of His Britannic Majesty's dominions in America, not included within the abovementioned limits: Provided, however, that the American fishermen shall be permitted to enter such bays or harbors for the purpose of shelter and of repairing damages therein, of purchasing wood, and of obtaining water, and for no other purpose whatever. But they shall be under such restrictions as may be necessary to prevent their taking, drying, or curing fish therein, or in any other manner whatever abusing the privi leges hereby reserved to them."

In virtue of these treaty provisions, citizens of the United States continued to fish on the coasts of the British Provinces without interruption for some twenty years, when question was raised as to their right to fish within the bays or indents of the coast, in consequence of an opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown that the expression "three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors," within which citizens of the United States were excluded from any right of fishing on the coast of British Amer ica, intends miles "to be measured from the headlands, or extreme points of land next the sea or the coast, or

of the entrance of bays or indents of the coast," and that, consequently, American fishermen had no right to enter bays, there to take fish, although the fishing might be at a greater distance than three miles from the shore of the bay.

This opinion, be it observed, makes no distinction between close bays and open ones, large indents of the coast and small ones, and, if carried into effect by the British Government, would exclude citizens of the United States from a large part of the productive fishing-grounds on the coast of British America.

Now, strange to say, this opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown is based on a mere blunder of theirs, or, to say the least, on a fiction, or a bald interpolation. After stating their conclusion, they assign, as the sole reason of it:

"As [that is, because] we are of opinion that the term 'headland' is used in the treaty to express the part of the land we have before mentioned, including the interior of the bays and the indents of the coasts."

It is not true that "the term 'headland' is used in the treaty to express the part of the land we have before mentioned."

Neither the term "headland" nor any word of similar signification is to be found in the treaty. The Law Officers of the Crown undertook to construe the treaty without reading it, and by this presumptuous carelessness caused the British Government to initi ate a series of measures of a semi-hostile character, which came very near producing another war be tween Great Britain and the United States.