Page:The Writings of Thomas Paine (1894), vol. 2.djvu/12

2 has taken place in that House respecting the terms on which such a negociation shall be opened.

“It is reported,” says he, “that Congress are still debating what the terms shall be, and that some men strenuously insist on such as others fear will not be agreed to, and as they apprehend may prevent any treaty at all, and such as our ally [France], by his treaties with us, is by no means bound to support us in demanding.”

Americanus, after running through a variety of introductory matter, comes at last to the point, and intimates, or rather informs, that the particular subject of debate in Congress has been respecting the fisheries on the Banks of Newfoundland, some insisting thereon as a matter of right and urging it as a matter of absolute necessity, others doubting, or appearing to doubt whether we have any right at all, and indifferent whether the fisheries be claimed or not. Among the latter of which Americanus appears to be one.

Either Americanus does not know how to make a bargain, or he has already made one, and his affectation of modesty is the dress of design. How, I ask, can Americanus, or any other person, know what claims or proposals will be rejected or what agreed to, till they be made, offered or demanded. To suppose a rejection is to invite it, and to publish our “apprehensions,” as a reason for declining the claim, is encouraging the enemy to fulfil the prediction. Americanus may think what he pleases, but for my own part, I hate a prophecier of ill-luck, because the pride of being thought wise often carries him to the wrong side.

That an inhabitant of America or a member of Congress should become an advocate for the exclusive right of Britain to the fisheries, and signify, as his opinion, that an American has not a right to fish in the American seas, is something very extraordinary.

“It is a question,” says he, “whether the subjects of these states had any other right to fishing than what they derived from their being subjects of Great Britain; and as it cannot be pretended that they were in the possession and enjoyment of the right either at the