86 COUNTER CASE OP THE UNITED STATES. 



These treaties of 1783, therefore, left the American fishermen on 

 exactly the same footing as British fishermen, so far as the use of 

 the waters of the so-called " French Coast " was concerned. 



So far as the United States and France were concerned, the 

 arrangement arrived at between the United States and Great Britain 

 was entirely in harmony with Article X of the treaty of 1778 between 

 the United States and France, which provided that the French fishing 

 rights referred to shall be " conformable to the true construction of 

 the treaties of Utrecht and Paris." Whatever bearing, if any, this 

 Franco- American treaty had upon the question of the extent of these 

 French rights, was disposed of by the abrogation of this treaty by 

 the Act of Congress of July 7, 1798. 



The subsequent treaty of September 30, 1800, between the United 

 States and France made no reference to any exclusive French fishing 

 rights on the Newfoundland coast or elsewhere, the agreement with 

 respect to the fisheries being merely that each party would not 



intermeddle in the fisheries of the other on its coasts, nor disturb the 

 other in the exercise of the rights which it now holds or may acquire 

 on the coast of Newfoundland, in the Gulph of St. Lawrence, or else- 

 where on the American coast northward of the United States. 



This treaty expired by its own limitations on July 31, 1809. 



It appears, therefore, that, notwithstanding the existence of the 

 French claim in 1783, the use of the waters of Newfoundland for 

 fishing, which American fishermen had enjoyed equally with British 

 fishermen prior to the revolution separating the American Colonies 

 from Great Britain, was continued under the treaty of peace of 1783 

 between the United States and Great Britain, by the stipulation in 

 Article I that they should have " liberty to take fish of erery kind on 

 such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall 



use." 



The French-claim in the negotiations of 1818. 



In 1818 the treaty stipulations between Great Britain and France 

 and the position of Great Britain with reference to the French fish- 

 ing rights on the Newfoundland coast were the same as in 1783, and 

 the official records of the negotiations of the treaty of 1818 show 

 that in the discussions leading up to it, which have already been ex- 

 amined in the Case of the United States, 6 no reference, either directly 



U. S. Case Appendix, p. 92. . * U. S. Case, pp. 51-59. 



