5 QUESTION ONE. 



BIGHT OF REGULATION. 

 PRELIMINARY. 



In the argument on this question presented in the British Case, it 

 has been shown that the provisions of the treaty of 1818 do not im- 

 pose any restriction on the sovereignty of Great Britain over the 

 waters and shores in question, and that the right to make regulations 

 with regard to the conduct of the fisheries granted by the treaty 

 resides with the British and Colonial Legislatures, and with them 

 alone. The treaty operates, as has been there submitted, simply as 

 an agreement, by which Great Britain undertook not to exercise her 

 sovereignty so as to nullify the liberties conferred by the treaty, or 

 to make unfair discrimination as against American fishermen. 



The considerations on which this conclusion is based are not dis- 

 cussed in the Case of the United States (pp. 8-10). Their conten- 

 tion is stated in the following passage : 



The United States and Great Britain thus met as independent na- 

 tions negotiating for the purpose of concluding a treaty of peace 

 dividing between them the British Empire in North America; and 

 standing on this basis the Commissioners on the part of the United 

 States asserted and insisted throughput the negotiations that the 

 British interests in the North Atlantic Coast fisheries were subject 

 to such division and that the preexisting rights of the Colonies 

 therein must be recognized and continued by the treaty. 



The people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and of the other 

 Colonies had continuously and freely resorted to these fisheries and 

 exercised unrestricted fishing rights and liberties there until the time 

 of the Revolution, and had borne almost unaided the burden of main- 

 taining and defending their own and British interests in these fish- 

 eries against the aggressions of the French during the wars between 

 Great Britain and France. In view of such continuous usage and 

 enjoyment and by virtue of the services rendered by them in defence 

 of these fisheries, the American Colonies asserted and insisted that 

 they had in them at least the equal rights of joint owners with Great 

 Britain and the other British Colonies. John Adams, one of 



6 the American Commissioners in the peace negotiations, bears 

 witness, in a statement written by him in 1822 in review of 



these negotiations, that the grounds and principles on which the 

 fisheries article of the treaty of 1783 was contended for on their part 

 and finally yielded on the part of Great Britain were among others 

 the following: 



8 



