316 ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 



to fisli in tlie non -territorial waters; but tliat it concedes to the United 

 States certain rights in tbe territorial waters, and tliat the only disi)nte 

 that has existed between the United States and the Government of tlie 

 Queen has been, since those Treaties, as to the interpretation of por- 

 tions of it which relate to bays and so forth — how they were to be con- 

 strued and how their limits were to be defined. That arises under a 

 Treaty of 1818, to which I shall come presently. 



Mr. Phelps. — I quite agree Sir Charles with your construction of 

 the Treaty of 1783. What I cite is the opinions given on both sides at 

 the time they were negotiating. 



Sir Charles Russell. — I do not understand really how my friend, 

 consistently with what I have just read, can say that he agrees with it, 

 unless he means to retract that argument as it appears in the printed 

 Argument. 



In order that what I am now about to read may be intelligible to the 

 Tribunal — I am sorry to have to go into it in detail, but I wish to clear 

 it up and make it quite apparent what the true position of things is, — 

 I may say tliat after that Treaty of 1783, there was, as the Tribu- 

 nal will recollect, at a later period, in 1812, a war with the United 

 States, that war arising out of an attempt to take British sailors from 

 American ships, which was resisted by the United States; the war 

 ended by the Treaty of 1818, known as the Treaty of Ghent. I am 

 going to refer now to the Treaty of 1783, after the Declaration of 

 American Independence; articles is as follows: 



1098 Article III. 



It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy nnmo- 

 lested the right: 



1. To take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and all the other hanks of 

 Newfoundland. 



2. Also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



3. And at all other places, in the sea, where the inhabitants of both countries used 

 at any time heretofore to lish. And also, that the inhabitants of the United States 

 shall have liberty : 



You note the difference between the two. 



1. To take fish of every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British 

 fishermen shall use (but not to dry or cure the same on that island). 



In other words, the right is acknowledged to take the fish outside 

 non-territorial waters. Inside the territorial waters the liberty is given, 

 under this Treaty, to take fish of every kind and to use them as British 

 fishermen may use them, except that they are not to have the right of 

 landing on the island for the purpose of curing. 



Then it says : 



2. And also on the coasts, bays and creeks of all other of His Britannic Majesty's 

 dominions in America. 



3. And that the American fishermen shall have liberty to dry and cure fish in any 

 of the unsettled bays, harbours, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and 

 Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but so soon as the same, or 

 either of them, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry 

 and cure fish at such settlement without a previous agreement for that purpose with 

 the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground. 



Now how was this Treaty regarded by the United States people them- 

 selves? I refer here again, as I have always tried to do all through, to 

 official documents as to which there can be no doubt, and for this pur- 

 pose I refer to the Ileport of the Committee of Foreign Aflairs of the 



