132 CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



treaty of 1818. We have made four fisheries treaties with Great 

 Britain, in 1783, 1818, 1854, and 1871, and in none of them has any 

 commercial privilege been secured to our fishermen. No serious 

 effort has been made to secure such privileges prior to the negotia- 

 tion now before the Senate. (App., p. 467.) 



UNITED STATES CONTENTIONS. 



The contentions of the United States are set out at length in these 

 discussions, but His Majesty's Government find some difficulty in 

 appreciating the exact ground on which the right to commercial 

 facilities for American fishing-vessels is to be supported before this 

 Tribunal. The treaty gives no right to those facilities. His Maj- 

 esty's Government contend that the treaty was framed on the assump- 

 tion that no such right existed, and that to grant such facili- 

 146 ties would be to alter the character of the liberties granted by 

 it ; but, be that as it may, it is certain that the treaty itself con- 

 fers no commercial rights. Yet, apart from the treaty, there is no 

 agreement between the two Governments under which this right can 

 be claimed. The Order-in- Council of 1830 manifestly applies to 

 trading- vessels only, and no suggestion was ever made that it applied 

 to fishing-vessels until the controversy of 1886. The position taken 

 by the United States Government before the Halifax Commission is 

 proof, if proof be needed, that no agreement as to fishing- vessels ex- 

 isted at that time. And the fact that American fishermen have paid 

 licence fees for the last twenty years in order to obtain certain limited 

 trade privileges is consistent only with the same conclusion. His 

 Majesty's Government content themselves, therefore, on the present 

 occasion with stating the argument in support of their own view, re- 

 serving to themselves the liberty to deal with the contention of the 

 United States when that contention has been more exactly stated in 

 the Case presented to the Tribunal. 



ABGTJMENT OF GBEAT BRITAIN. 

 TREATY OF 1818. 



1. The treaty of 1818 does not confer any liberty to trade. On the 

 contrary, it specifies certain limited purposes for which the use of 

 the British shores is permitted, and the clear intention is that Ameri- 

 can fishermen should have no other liberties on those shores. At the 

 date of the treaty no American vessel had a right to enter any port 

 in British North America for commercial purposes. Those ports 

 were absolutely closed to American traders, just as the ports of the 

 United States were closed to British traders. The treaty made an 

 exception to this general prohibition, and permitted vessels of a par- 

 ticular kind, to wit, fishing-vessels, to have access to the British 



