ORAL ARGUMENT OP SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 321 



States has never alleged that she was asserting, that the right of fishery 

 in the non-territorial waters was not a right that belonged to every 

 independent nation. That is the point. 



Senator Morgan. — Do you mean she has abandoned it since 1783? 



Sir Charges Kussell, — I do not know that tliat would be appro- 

 priate language. So far as I have read the history of it, there was no 

 assertion of it: certainly not since 1783. 



Senator Morgan. — There was some mention of it. 



Sir Charles Kussell. — I have read all the documents, and you 

 have seen what mention there is of it. I have read that letter of Lord 

 Bathurst, and I suppose I must read it again. That is going far enough 

 back. Did you mean the United States abandoned it? 



Senator Morgan. — No; Great Britain. 



Sir Charles Eussell. — Then I must read this letter of 1815. 

 1104 First of all, the Treaty of 1783 shows it, as it seems to me; but 

 here is the official statement. 



The President. — I think there is no doubt as to that time. What 

 I hint at is that perhaps in former times, say in the seventeenth century 

 towards the middle or end, — perhaps at that time England may have 

 asserted rights over the sea which it did not maintain in the course of 

 the eighteenth century, and certainly not in the course of the nine- 

 teenth. It is rather perhaps a progress of theory than of right. 



Sir Charles Eussell. — I recognize an amiable efibrt to give an 

 explanation of this paragraph, but I beg respectfully to say that this 

 paragraph, is not capable of it, because the paragraph begins with 1783. 

 It is not referring to anything antecedent to 1783. If it had, 1 shovld 

 have begun earlier and examined it earlier, but it begins with 1783 and 

 it begins with the erroneous statement that the right of fishing in the 

 open sea was conceded by that Treaty to, or created by that Treaty in, 

 the United States. That is the fallacy. Not only does it begin in 1783, 

 but it absolutely goes on to say that the assertion was further made in 

 1815, because at the to^) of page 157, he says "it never occurred to any 

 of these diplomatists in 1783 or 1815 to conceive that these fisheries" 

 and so on, and yet in 1815 Lord Bathurst's letter to the United States 

 Minister (which I must read again) says: 



But the rights ackiiowleged by the Treaty of 1783 are not only distinguishable 

 from the liberties conceded by the same Treaty and the fouudatiou upon which they 

 stand, but they ore chiefly distinguished in the Treaty of 1783 itself. The under- 

 signed begs to call the attention of the American Minister to the wording of the lirst 

 and third Articles to which he has often referred for the foundation of his argument. 

 In the first article Great Britain ackuowleges an independence already expressly 

 recognized by the Powers of Europe and by herself in her consent to enter into pro- 

 visional articles in November 1782. 



In the third article Great Britain acknowledges the right of the United States to 

 take fish on the banks of Newibundland and other places from which Great Britain 

 has no right to exclude an independent nation, but they are to have the liberty to 

 cure and dry them at certain unsettled places within his Majesty's territory. 



I think, even if that right was asserted at some earlier period. Sen- 

 ator Morgan will see that that is a clear abandonment. 



I leave this branch of the subject by expressing my agreement with 

 the opinion stated on page 157 of the United States Argument, tliat 

 there can not be one international law for the Atlantic, and one for the 

 Pacific, and I agree the law is the same for each — that outside the terri- 

 torial limits there is an unrestricted right and liberty for all mankind 

 to take what it can from the bosom of the sea. 

 B S PT. XIII 21 



