Peace and the Newfoundland Fisheries

From the Pennsylvania Gazzette
July 14, 1779

AMERICANUS, in your last, has favored the public with a description of himself as a preface to his piece.  "l am," says he, "neither a member of Congress or of the Assembly of this State, or of any other, but a private citizen, in moderate circumstances in point of fortune, and whose political principles have never been questioned."  All this may be very true, and yet nothing to the purpose; neither can the declaration be admitted either as a positive or negative proof of what his principles are.  They may be good, or they may not, and yet be so well known as not to be doubted by those who know the writer. 

Joseph Galloway formerly wrote under the signature of AMERICANUS, and though every honest man condemns his principles, yet nobody pretends to question them.  When a writer, and especially an anonymous one, readily means to declare his political principles as a reinforcement to his arguments, he ought to be full, clear, and [begin page 82] decisive, but this declaration is so ambiguously constructed and so unmeaningly applied, that it may be used by any and every person either within or without the enemy's lines; for it does not declare what his principles are, but that, be they what they may, they are not questioned. 

Before I proceed, I cannot help taking notice of another inconsistency in his publication of last week.  "In my last," says he, "I said that it was very unhappy that this question has been touched on or agitated at all at this time, to which," continues he, "I will now add, it is particularly so, that it is become a subject of discussion in the public papers."  This is very extraordinary from the very man who first brought it into the public papers. 

A short piece or two, on the importance of fisheries in general, were anonymously published some time ago; but as a matter of treaty debate in Congress, or as a matter of right in itself, with the arguments and grounds on which they proceeded, AMERICANUS is originally chargeable with the inconvenience he pretends to lament.  I with some others had heard, or perhaps knew, that such a subject was in debate, and though I always laid myself out to give it a meeting in the [begin page 83] papers whenever it should appear, I never hinted a thought that might tend to start it. 

"To permit the public," says AMERICANUS, "to be made acquainted with what are to be the ultimate demands in a proposed treaty is really something new and extraordinary, if not impolitic and absurd."  There is a compound of folly and arrogance in this declaration, which deserves to be severely censured.  Had he said that to publish all the arguments of Congress, on which any claim in a proposed treaty is founded or objected to, might be inconvenient and in some cases impolitic, he would have been nearly right; but the ultimate demand itself ought to be made known, together with the rights and reasons on which that demand is founded. 

But who is this gentleman who undertakes to say that to permit the public to be made acquainted is really impolitic and absurd?  And to this question I will add that if he distinguishes Congress into one body, and the public into another, I should be glad to know in what situation he places himself, so as not to be subject to his own charge of absurdity.  If he belongs to the former, he has, according to his own position, a right to know but not to tell, and if to the latter, he has neither aright to know nor to tell, and yet [begin page 84] in some character or other he has done both.  If this gentleman's political principles were never questioned before, I think they ought to be questioned now; for a man must be a strange l character indeed, whom no known character can suit.
 
I am the more inclined to suspect AMERICANUS, because he most illiberally, and in contradiction to everything sensible and reasonable, endeavored, in his former piece, to insinuate that Governor Johnstone had bribed a party in Congress to insist on the right of the United States to fish on the Banks of Newfoundland.  An insinuation so impolitic and absurd, so wide and foreign to the purpose of Governor Johnstone's commission, can only be understood the contrary way; namely, that he had bribed somebody or other to insist that the right should not be insisted on. 

The expression of Governor Johnstone, as printed in the English papers, is literally this.  "I do not," says he, "mean to disavow I have had transactions, where other means have been used besides persuasion."  Governor Johnstone was in no places in America but Philadelphia and New York, and these other means must have been used in one or other, or both of these places.  We have had evidence of one application of his, [begin page 85] with an offer of ten thousand guineas; which was refused, and treated with the disdain it deserved; for the offer of a bribe contains in it, to all men of spirit, the substance of an affront.  But it is strange indeed, if the one that was refused was the only one that was offered.  Let any person read AMERICANUS in your paper of June twenty-third, and if he can after that acquit him of all suspicion, he must be charitable indeed.  But why does not AMERICANUS declare who he is?  This is no time for concealment, neither are the presses, though free, to become the vehicles of disguised poison.  I have had my eye on that signature these two months past, and to what lengths the gentleman meant to go himself can best decide. 

In his first piece he loosely introduced his intended politics, and put himself in a situation to make further advances.  His second was a rapid progress, and his last a retreat.  The difference between the second and last is visible.  In the former of those two he endeavors to invalidate the right of the United States to fish on the Banks of Newfoundland, because, forsooth, it was not mentioned in any of the former charters.  It is very extraordinary that these same charters, which marked out and were the instruments of [begin page 86] our dependence, should now be introduced as describing the line of our independence. 

In the same piece AMERICANUS likewise says, "it is a question whether the subjects of these states had any other right to that fishery, than what they derived from being the subjects of Great Britain."  If this be not advocating the cause of the enemy, I know not what is.  It is newspaper advice to them to insist on an exclusive right to the fisheries, by insinuating ours to be only a derivative one from them; which, had it been the case, as it is not, would have been very improper doctrine to preach at the first instance of a negotiation.  If they have any right, let them find those rights out themselves.  We shall have enough to do to look to our own side of the question, and ought not to admit persons among us to join force with the enemy either in arms or argument. 

Whether AMERICANUS found himself approaching a stormy latitude, and fearing for the safety of his bark, thought proper to tack about in time, or whether he has changed his appetite, and become an epicure in fish, or his principles, and become an advocate for America, must be left for his own decision; but in his last week's publication he has surrendered the grounds of [begin page 87] his former one, and changed the argument from a matter of right to a matter of supposed convenience only.  He no more speaks of our right to the fisheries as derivative right from Britain, in consequence of our formerly being subjects.  Not a syllable of the charters, whose silence he had produced as invalidating or negativing our independent right.  Neither has he endeavored to support, or offered to renew, what he had before asserted - namely, that we were not in possession of the right of fishing at the time of the Declaration of Independence, or of the signing the Treaties of Paris; but he has admitted a theorem which I had advanced in opposition to his suggestions, and which no man can contradict, viz. that our right to fish on banks of Newfoundland is a natural right.

Now if our right is natural, it could not be derived from subjection, and as we never can but by our own voluntary consent be put out of the possession of a natural national right, though by the temporary events of war we may be put out of the enjoyment of such a right, and as the British Fishery Act of Parliament in Seventy-six to exclude us was no act of ours, and universally denied by us, therefore, from his own admission, he has contradicted himself, and allowed that we [begin page 88] were as fully in possession of the right of fishing on those banks, both at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and at the time of signing the Treaties of Paris, as at any period preceding them. 
 
That he has admitted the natural right in his last piece, in contradiction to his supposed derivative right in his former one, will appear from two or three quotations I shall make. 

1st. He says, The giving up of our right to this object (the fisheries) and the making an express demand to have it guaranteed to us; or the passing it over in silence in negotiation, are distinct things.
 
2d. I am well assured, he says, that there is not a member in Congress any ways disposed to give up or relinquish our right to the Newfoundland fishery. 

The "right" here admitted cannot be a right derived from subjection, because we are no longer British subjects; neither can it be a right conveyed by charters, because we not only know no charters now, but those charters we used to know are silent oh the matter in question.  It must therefore be a natural right.  Neither does the situation of America and Britain admit of any other explanation, because they are, with respect to each other, in a state of nature, not being even within the law of nations; for the law of [begin page 89] nations is the law of treaties, compounded with customary usage, and between America and Britain there is yet no treaty, nor any nation at custom established. 

But the third quotation I shall make from his last piece will prove, from his own words, his assent to the natural right which I contended for in behalf of these states, and which he, in his former piece, impliedly disowned, by putting our whole right on a question, and making our former subjection the grounds on which that question stood. 
 
I drew no conclusion, he says; to exclude these states, or bar them from the right which by nature they are entitled to with others, as well to the fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland as to those in the ocean at large.
 
As he now admits a natural right, and appears to contend for it, I ask, why then was his former piece published, and why was our right there put in the lowest terms possible?  He does not in that piece even hint, or appear to think of, or suppose such a thing as a natural right, but stakes the issue on a question which does not apply to the case, and went as far as a man dared to go, in saying we had no right at all.  From all this twisting and turning, this advancing and [begin page 90] retreating, and appearing to own at last what he impliedly disowned at first, I think myself justified in drawing this conclusion, that either AMERICANUS does not know how to conduct an argument, or he intended to be a traitor if he dared.
 
The natural right of the United States in those fisheries is either whole or in part.  If to the whole, she can admit a participation to other nations.  If to a part, she, in consequence of her natural right to partake, claims her share therein, which is for as much as she can catch and carry away.  Nature, in her distribution of favors, seems to have appointed these fisheries as a property to the northern division of America, from Florida upwards, and therefore our claim of an exclusive right seems to be rationally and consistently founded; but our natural right to what, we can catch is clear, absolute and positive. 

Had AMERICANUS intended no mote than to consider our claim, whether It should be made or not, as a matter of convenience only, which is the stage he has now brought it to, he ought by no means to have made even the slightest stroke at the right itself; because to omit making the claim in the treaty, and to assign the doubtfulness of the right as a reason for the omission, is to surrender the fisheries upon the insufficiency [begin page 91] of the pretension, and of consequence to exclude ourselves from the practice by the silence of the treaty, and from the right by the reasons upon record. 

Had I time to laugh over my fish, I could in this place set AMERICANUS up to a very agreeable ridicule.  He has all this while been angling without a bait, and endeavoring to deceive with an empty hook, and yet this man says he understands fishing as well as any man in America.  "Very few." says he, "and I speak it without vanity, are better acquainted with the fisheries than myself."  If this be true, which I hope it is not, it is the best reason that can be given for relinquishing them, and if made known would, on the other hand, be a great inducement to Britain to cede the whole right, because by our being possessed of aright without knowing how to use it, she would be under no apprehensions of our thinning the ocean, and we should only go out with our vessels to buy and not to catch.
 
If AMERICANUS wished to persuade the Americans to say nothing about the fisheries in a treaty with Britain, he ought, as a politician of some kind or other, to have baited his hook with a plausible something, and, instead of telling them that their right was doubtful, he should have [begin page 92] assured them it was indisputable, that Britain never meant to question it, that it was needless to say anything about it, that all nations knew our rights, and naturally meant to acknowledge them.  But he, like a wiseacre, has run against the post instead of running past it, and has, by the arguments he has used, produced a necessity for doing the very thing he was writing to prevent; and yet this man says he understands fishing as well as any man in America - It must be a cod indeed, that should be catched by him. 

Common Sense. 
Philadelphia, July 12, 1779.