THE NORTH ATLANTIC FISHERIES DISPUTE AND 

 ITS ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE J9I0 



By Hugh M. Smith 



An international fishery event of great interest and im- 

 portance to the United States, Canada, and Newfoundland 

 was the settlement in 1910 by arbitration of the long-stand- 

 ing differences between the United States and Great Brit- 

 ain growing out of ambiguities in the treaty defining the 

 rights of American fishermen on the coasts of British 

 North American colonies. 



The treaty of peace between the United States and Great 

 Britain in 1783 had as its third article the following: 



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

 enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand 

 Bank, and on all the other banks of Newfoundland ; also in the Gulph 

 of Saint Lawrence and at all other places in the sea where the inhabi- 

 tants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish. And also 

 that the inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty 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) and 

 also on the coasts, bays and creeks of all other of His Britannic 

 Majesty's dominions in America; 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 fish- 

 ermen to dry or cure fish at such settlements, without a previous 

 agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors or posses- 

 sors of the ground. 



After the close of the War of 1812, the question arose 

 as to whether the fishery provisions of the treaty of 1783 

 had been abrogated by the war. Great Britain contended 

 that this part of the treaty was no longer in force, the 

 United States refused to agree to such a contention. With 

 the two governments thus assuming opposite views on the 

 question, the prosecution of the fisheries necessarily led 

 to more or less serious conflicts of authority and weighty 



