244 BRITISH . extent to which the French are carrying on their fisheries, and the number of men they have employed, are extraordinary, and prove the object to be of vast importance, The great number of ships of war now in progress of building in France , and the vast num¬ ber of seamen which have been rearing since 1815 to man them, show also how determined that nation is to become again a great naval power. By the convention of 1818, the Americans of the United States are allowed to fish along all our coasts and harbours, within three marine miles of the shore, (an indefinite distance,) and of curing fish in such har¬ bours and bays as are uninhabited, or, if inhabited, with the consent of the inhabitants. The expert and industrious Americans, ever fertile in expedients, and always alert in the produce of gain, know well how to take advantage of so profitable a concession. From the sea-coasts of Newfoundland ceded to France , which comprehend half the shores of the island, and the best fishing grounds, our fishermen have been expelled, and driven to the necessity of resorting, from two to four hundred miles farther north, to the coast of Labrador , where they ere again met by swarms of Americans. By particular circumstances, and the better to accomplish their object, the Americans are known to be guided by one feeling, to act more in union, on arriving on the fishing coasts. They frequently occupy the whole of the best fishing banks, to the exclusion of our fishermen ; and their daring aggres-