QUESTION ONE. 5 



independent States absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown. 

 From that time onwards they claimed to exercise uncontrolled sov- 

 ereignty over the territories within their respective jurisdictions as 

 then constituted, but, by the very repudiation of their allegiance, 

 the inhabitants of those States necessarily surrendered any rights 

 they had previously enjoyed as British subjects in other parts of 

 the Empire. From 1776 onward, the thirteen Colonies claimed to 

 be free and independent States, and received recognition as such 

 from other countries. And recognition of their independence by 

 Great Britain was insisted on as a preliminary to the negotiation 

 for the termination of the war. 



The remaining British Colonies in North America (and they in- 

 cluded the whole of the British territory outside the thirteen States) 

 did not at any time join in the rebellion; they adhered to Great 

 Britain, and never passed from British possession. By the treaty 

 of 1783, the King of England formally acknowledged the relin- 

 quishment of sovereignty over the thirteen Colonies ; but no question 

 was ever raised, or could ever have been raised, as to the sovereignty 

 over the other Colonies, for that was not affected by the war. 



If the treaty of 1783, so far as it related to the fisheries, was a 

 partition of common property between joint owners, the question 

 would at once arise, Who were these joint owners? They could 

 not have been the Crown of Great Britain on the one hand, and the 

 thirteen Colonies on the other, for the Colonies never had any rights 

 of ownership in respect of these territorial fisheries. And it 

 8 cannot be suggested that the owners were the individual citi- 

 zens of the thirteen Colonies, and the individual subjects of 

 the British Empire. 



The true view, it is submitted, is that there could have been at the 

 date of the treaty no such joint ownership as is suggested by the 

 United States, and that the sole and entire ownership of the fisheries 

 was vested in the British Crown. 



The negotiations which preceded the articles of 1782 will be found 

 fully recorded in the papers printed in the appendix to this Counter- 

 Case, and the discussions are set out there in detail, but there is no 

 single suggestion throughout these negotiations of any such claim to 

 British territory or to British territorial waters as is now put for- 

 ward. On the contrary, the instructions sent by Congress in 1779, 

 and the contentions of the United States Commissioners at that time, 

 are, as will presently be shown, altogether opposed to any such claim. 



Moreover, later documents in the appendix go even further than 

 this; they establish beyond doubt that this theory of partition was 

 put forward for the first time at Ghent on the 1st November, 1814, no 

 less than thirty-two years after the date of the preliminary articles of 

 independence. 



