774 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



national comity, which is in no sense a substantial right, and is out- 

 side of all treaty agreements. 



We would then have the treaty prohibition against our fishing 

 vessels entering Canadian bays and harbours for " any other purpose 

 whatever " than to buy wood, obtain water, make repairs, and find 

 shelter; while their commercial privileges would entitle them to enter 

 the ports of these bays and harbours for any lawful commercial pur- 

 pose; and this would result from our act in giving them, under our 

 laws, the double character of fishermen and merchantmen. 



The British Government treats this proposition as a mere attempt 

 to evade the treaty of 1818, and, in that view, they insist upon its 

 rigid enforcement. They quote the restrictions of the treaty of 1818 

 as being obligatory upon the United States, and insist that we can 

 not change the character of a vessel from a fisherman to a merchant- 

 man by giving to such vessel any form of licence, enrollment, regis- 

 try, or sea papers, in addition to such as place it in the class of a 

 fishing vessel. 



However illiberal such a contention may be, they certainly claim 

 the right, under the treaty, and outside of it as well, to deny all 

 entrance of our fishing vessels to their bays and harbours, except in 

 their character as fishermen. As vessels of commerce, the British 

 Government claims that they enter the ports by comity alone. As 

 fishing vessels, they admit that they enter the bays and harbours 

 by right, under the treaty, but only for the purposes to which the 

 treaty of 1818 restricts them. 



We do not intend to lay down what we may believe to be the 

 limits of jurisdiction over adjacent seas that are said to be secured 

 to the Governments owning the coasts by the laws of nations. 

 Chancellor Kent, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, and Mr. Seward, and 

 many other great lawyers and statesmen of our country have advo- 

 cated theories on this subject quite at variance with the 3-mile 

 boundary of our right of jurisdiction seaward from the coast. This 

 question needs to be handled with great circumspection. This is a 

 very important matter. 



A vast extent of the coast of the Pacific, reaching to the arctic 

 circle, and destined to become a more important fishing-ground than 

 the Atlantic coasts, must be affected by the principles of international 

 law which the United States shall assert as defining the limits sea- 

 wards from the coasts of our exclusive right to fish for seals and 

 sea-otters, whales, and the many varieties of food-fishes that swarm 

 along the coasts of Behring Sea and Straits. We might find, in 

 that quarter, a very inconvenient application of the doctrine that, 

 by the law of nations, the three-mile limit of the exclusive right of 

 fishery is to follow and be measured from the sinuosities of the coasts 

 of the bays, creeks, and harbors that exceed six miles in width at 

 the entrance; and an equally inconvenient application of our claim 

 for full commercial privileges in Canadian ports for our fishermen, 

 when applied to British Columbian fishermen in our Pacific ports, 

 which are nearer to them than to our fisheries in Alaska. 



No allusion is made in the treaty of 1818 to the laws of nations as 

 furnishing canons for its interpretation ; and we infer that its mean- 

 ing is to be gathered alone from its context and the circumstances 

 that attended its adoption. 



