and from Canada on the north to the southern boundary of Georgia.
Unfortunately the northern line, through ignorance and
carelessness rather than through malice, was left uncertain at
various points and became the subject of almost continuous
controversy until the last bit of it was settled in 1911.*

* See Lord Bryce's Introduction (p. xxiv) to W. A. Dunning. "The
British Empire and the United States" (1914).


The fisheries of the North Atlantic, for which Newfoundland
served as the chief entrepot, had been one of the great assets of
North America from the time of its discovery. They had been one
of the chief prizes at stake in the struggle between the French
and the British for the possession of the continent, and they had
been of so much value that a British statute of 1775 which cut
off the New England fisheries was regarded, even after the
"intolerable acts" of the previous year, as the height of
punishment for New England. Many Englishmen would have been glad
to see the Americans excluded from these fisheries, but John
Adams, when he arrived from The Hague, displayed an appreciation
of New England interests and the quality of his temper as well by
flatly refusing to agree to any treaty which did not allow full
fishing privileges. The British accordingly yielded and the
Americans were granted fishing rights as "heretofore" enjoyed.
The right of navigation of the Mississippi River, it was declared
in the treaty, should "forever remain free and open" to both
parties; but here Great Britain was simply passing on to the
United States a formal right which she had received from France
and was retaining for herself a similar right which might