George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

‘ [216] peace, should the common right of fishing be given

Chap. IX.} 1779. June 3.

up.’¹

On the third of June, Gerry, who was from Marblehead, again appeared as the champion of the American right to the fisheries on banks or coasts, as exercised during their political connection with Great Britain. He was in part supported by Sherman;² but New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island alone sustained a right to the fisheries on the coasts of British provinces; and, though Pennsylvania came to their aid, the ‘Gallican party,’ by a vote of seven states against the four, set aside the main question; so that congress refused even to stipulate for the ‘free and peaceable use and exercise of the common right of fishing on the banks of Newfoundland.’

In the preceding December the queen of France, after many years of an unfruitful marriage, gave birth to a daughter. On the fifteenth of June, con-

15.

gress, congratulating the king of France on the birth of a princess, asked for ‘the portraits of himself and his royal consort, to be placed in their council chamber, that the representatives of these states might daily have before their eyes the first royal friends and patrons of their cause.’ This was not merely the language of adulation. The Americans felt the sincerest interest in the happiness of Louis the Sixteenth. An honest impulse of gratitude gave his name to the city which overlooks the falls of the Ohio; and, when in 1781 a son was born to him, Pennsylvania commemorated the event in the name of one of its counties. In later years, could the