112 CASE OP GREAT BRITAIN. 



124 3. The United States renounces any liberty theretofore en- 

 joyed or claimed 



to take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine miles of any of the 

 coasts, bays, creeks, or harbours of His Britannic Majesty's dominions 

 in America not included within the above-mentioned limits. 



DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE PHRASES. 



The word " coast " is used throughout the treaty as something dis- 

 tinct from bays, harbours, and creeks ; and it is submitted that 



(a.) The word " coast " alone is used in the first part, because coast 

 alone was meant. 



(&.) The word "coasts" was followed by "bays, harbours, and 

 creeks " in the third part, because the intention was to include those 

 indentations. 



(c.) And when the indentations alone are intended (as in the second 

 part of the provision), the word " coast " is omitted altogether. 



Possibly, if the word " coast " had been used alone, without any 

 such context as is to be found in this treaty, it might have been held 

 to include the indentations of the coast. But the language under 

 examination makes a clear distinction between " coasts," on the one 

 hands, and " bays, harbours, and creeks," on the other, as the treaty of 

 1783 had already done, and as the treaties of 1854 and 1871 subse- 

 quently did. 



NEGOTIATIONS, 1814-18. 



Between the peace treaty of 1814 and the treaty of 1818. Great 

 Britain was contending that the liberty of fishing granted by the 

 treaty of 1783 had been terminated by the war of 1812. and the United 

 States was contending that the war had not determined it. During 

 the negotiations for a settlement, Lord Bathurst (the Secretary of 

 State for Foreign Affairs for Great Britain), in writing (30th Octo- 

 ber, 1815) to Mr. Adams (the Minister of the United States in Lon- 

 don), stated that His Majesty's Government felt (App., p. 69.) 



every disposition to afford to the citizens of those States all the liber- 

 ties and privileges connected with the fisheries which can consist with 

 the just rights and interests of Great Britain, and secure His Majesty's 

 subjects from those undue molestations in their fisheries which they 

 have formerly experienced from citizens of the United States. . . . 

 It was not of fair competition that His Majesty's Government had 

 reason to complain, but of the preoccupation of British harbours and 

 creeks in North America by the fishing vessels of the United States 

 and the forcible exclusion of British vessels from places where the 

 fishery might be most advantageously conducted. 



INSTRUCTIONS, 1815. 



125 In the same year in the instructions with regard to fishing 

 by the United States (which were communicated to the United 



