108 COUNTEB CASE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



vessels should be excluded " from carrying also merchandise," but 

 that this proposition "being resisted by the American negotiators, 

 was abandoned," and goes on to say, " this fact would seem clearly 

 to indicate that the business of fishing did not then, and does not 

 now, disqualify vessels from also trading in the regular ports of 

 entry." A reference to the proceedings alluded to will show that the 

 proposition mentioned related only to United States vessels visiting 

 those portions of the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland on which 

 the United States fishermen had been granted the right to fish, and to 

 land for drying and curing fish, and the rejection of the proposal 

 can, at the utmost, be supposed only to indicate that the liberty 

 to carry merchandise might exist without objection in relation to 

 those coasts, and is no ground for supposing that the right extends 

 to the regular ports of entry, against the express words of the 

 treaty. 



The express words of the treaty, which are referred to in the 

 above extract, it will be remembered, are the words of the renuncia- 

 tory clause which have no application to the treaty coasts. 



The negotiations preceding the treaty of 1818, to which reference 

 is made in the foregoing extract, are reviewed at length in the Case 

 of the United States ; and it is there shown that, in view of the posi- 

 tion taken by the two Governments in those negotiations, it cannot 

 be claimed on the part of Great Britain that the enjoyment of com- 

 mercial privileges by the inhabitants of the United States exercis- 

 ing their treaty liberty of fishing would be contrary to the intention 

 of that treaty. 



It is, therefore, contended on the part of the United States that 

 Article I of the treaty of 1818 cannot be interpreted as meaning that 

 the inhabitants of the United States are not entitled to use the 

 same vessel for fishing and for trading purposes, if they are duly au- 

 thorized by the United States in that behalf, in the exercise of their 

 fishing liberty under the treaty of 1818, and in the enjoyment of 

 any commercial privileges which are now accorded, by agreement 

 or otherwise, to United States trading vessels generally on the treaty 



coasts. 



CHANDLER P. ANDERSON, 

 Agent of the United States in the 

 North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration. 



