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238 Newfoundland, and why have you not stipulated for a reciprocity of fishing in the American harbours and creeks," he showed that for the first of the two annual fishing seasons it would have been impossible to exclude the American fishermen, while in the second there would be plenty of room for both parties, and no necessity for the English fishermen, owing to their superior advantages from the exclusive command of the neighbouring shores, to feel hampered by the presence of those of the United States. The same reply could be given on the question of the concessions made to France, which had the additional merit of being the best means of preventing the eternal bickerings of the fishermen of the two countries.

The cession of the two Floridas, like that of the back lands of Canada, he defended, by the test of imports and exports. These amounted to £220,000 a year, a sum not worth contending for, at the hazard of continuing the war. The cession of Tobago, it had been said, would be the ruin of the English cotton manufacture. He replied that the English cotton manufacture had been great before Tobago was an English possession, while the islands restored to England were just as well adapted to the cultivation of cotton as Tobago. The cession of St. Lucia and the clause relating to Dunkirk were, he said, mourned over as fatal, when considered from a naval and military standpoint; but the opinion of Admiral Rodney could be quoted to the effect that Dominica was more than the equal of St. Lucia for those purposes; while the authority or Admiral Hawke, and there was no higher authority, could be quoted to show that all the art and cost which France could bestow on the harbour of Dunkirk would not render it formidable to England. France, as Lord Grantham had already observed, wished to have the feathers she had formerly strutted in restored to her, and