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
sometime prove of use, for as long as Spain held both banks at the mouth
of the Mississippi River, the right was of little practical value.

Two subjects involving the greatest difficulty of arrangement were
the compensation of the Loyalists and the settlement of commercial
indebtedness. The latter was really a question of the payment of British
creditors by American debtors, for there was little on the other side
of the balance sheet, and it seems as if the frugal Franklin would have
preferred to make no concessions and would have allowed creditors to
take their own chances of getting paid. But the matter appeared to
Adams in a different light--perhaps his New England conscience was
aroused--and in this point of view he was supported by Jay. It was
therefore finally agreed "that creditors on either side shall meet
with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value in sterling
money, of all bona fide debts heretofore contracted." However just this
provision may have been, its incorporation in the terms of the treaty
was a mistake on the part of the Commissioners, because the Government
of the United States had no power to give effect to such an arrangement,
so that the provision had no more value than an emphatic expression of
opinion. Accordingly, when some of the States later disregarded this
part of the treaty, the British had an excuse for refusing to carry out
certain of their own obligations.

The historian of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788, H. B. Grigsby,
relates an amusing incident growing out of the controversy over the
payment of debts to creditors in England:

"A Scotchman, John Warden, a prominent lawyer and go