4 COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



" That New England, and especially Massachusetts, had done more 

 in defence of them than all the rest of the British Empire. That the 

 various projected expeditions to Canada, in which they were defeated 

 by British negligence, the conquest of Louisburg, in 1745, and the 

 subsequent conquest of Nova Scotia, in which New England had ex- 

 pended more blood and treasure than all the rest of the British Em- 

 pire, were principally effected with a special view to the security and 

 protection of the fisheries. 



" That the inhabitants of the United States had as clear a right to 

 every branch of those fisheries, and to cure fish on land, as the in- 

 habitants of Canada or Nova Scotia ; that the citizens of Boston, New 

 York, or Philadelphia, had as clear a right to those fisheries, as the 

 citizens of London, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, or Dublin. 



and further: 



" We considered that treaty as a division of the empire. Our inde- 

 pendence, our rights to territory and to the fisheries, as practised 

 before the Revolution were no more a grant from Britain to us than 

 the treaty was a grant from us of Canada, Nova Scotia, England, 

 Scotland, and Ireland to the Britons. The treaty was nothing more 

 than mutual acknowledgment of antecedent rights." 



The suggestion thus put forward is, apparently, that the treaty of 

 1818, in regard to the fisheries, is a continuance of the treaty of 1783 ; 

 that the latter treaty was in effect a partition of the British North 

 American fisheries between two joint owners; and that it follows that 

 Great Britain cannot have any right to legislate in respect of the 

 fishery carried on by American citizens on the shores or in the waters 

 to which they have liberty of access under the treaty of 1818. 



His Majesty's Government demurs, in passing, to the reasoning by 

 which this contention is supported. The United States do not claim 

 sovereignty over these territories or over these waters; and have no 

 right of legislation in respect of them. The sovereignty remains in 

 Great Britain, and, therefore, in the absence of any exemption 

 7 in the treaty, American fishermen are necessarily subject to 

 British legislation. Moreover, if their claim to fish be based 

 on the ground that it is a continuance of the right which they enjoyed 

 as British subjects, and that appears to be the American contention, 

 then it is clear that they take the right subject to British control. 

 They cannot claim to have the right freed from the obligations under 

 which it was previously enjoyed, for that would be a different and a 

 greater right. 



TREATY WAS NOT A PARTITION. 



But the point does not merit discussion, because the assumption 

 on which the whole argument is based is altogether without war- 

 rant. The treaty of 1783 was not and could not have been a parti- 

 tion of the British North American fisheries. The thirteen Ameri- 

 can Colonies took up arms, and in 1776 declared themselves to be 



