270 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTEE CASE. 



bays, and other places on the coasts of Nova Scotia; that is to say 

 on those which lie towards the east, within thirty leagues, beginning 

 from the island commonly called Sable, inclusively, and thence along 

 towards the southwest." 



By the thirteenth article of the same treaty, French subjects were 

 excluded from fishing on any other part of the coast of the Island of 

 Newfoundland, then from Cape Bona vista northward, and then west- 

 ward to Point Riche. By the fifteenth article of the treaty of Utrecht, 

 between Great Britain and Spain, certain rights of fishing at the Island 

 of Newfoundland, had been reserved to the Guipuscoans, and other 

 subjects of Spain ; but in the eighteenth article of the treaty of peace 

 between Great Britain and Spain, of 1763, his Catholic majesty had de- 

 sisted, " as well for himself as for his successors, from all pretension 

 which he might have formed in favour of the Guipuscoans and other 

 his subjects, to the right of fishing in the neighbourhood of the Island 

 of Newfoundland." In these several cases, it is apparent that Great 

 Britain had asserted and maintained an exclusive and proprietary 

 jurisdiction over the whole fishing grounds of the Grand Bank, as 

 well as on the coast of North America, and in the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence. Nor are we without subsequent indications of what she would 

 have considered as her exclusive jurisdiction, if a majority of the 

 American commission at Ghent had been as ready as Mr. Russell 

 declares himself to have been, to subscribe to her doctrine, that all 

 pur fishing liberties had lost, by the war, every vestige of right. For, 

 in the summer of 1815, the year after the conclusion of the peace, her 

 armed vessels on the American coast warned all American fishing 

 vessels not to approach within sixty miles of the shores. 



It was this incident which led to the negotiations which terminated 

 in the convention of 20th October, 1818. In that instrument the 

 United States have renounced forever, that part of the fishing liber- 

 ties which they had enjoyed or claimed in certain parts of the exclu- 

 sive jurisdiction of the British provinces, and within three marine 

 miles of the shores. This privilege, without being of much use to 

 pur fishermen, had been found very inconvenient to the British : and, 

 in return, we have acquired an enlarged liberty, both of fishing and 

 drying fish, within the other parts of the British jurisdiction, forever. 

 The first article of this convention affords a signal testimonial of the 

 correctness of the principle assumed by the American plenipotenti- 

 aries at Ghent; for, by accepting the express renunciation of the 

 United States, of a small portion of the privilege in question, and 

 by confirming and enlarging all the remainder of the privilege for- 

 ever, the British government have implicitly acknowledged that the 

 liberties of the third article of the treaty of 1783 had not been abro- 

 gated by the war, and have given the final stroke to the opposite 

 doctrine of Mr. Russell. That words of perpetuity in a treaty cannot 

 give that character to the engagements it contains, is not indeed a 

 new discovery in diplomatic history; but that truism has as little 

 concern with this question, as the annulment of our treaty of 1778 

 with France, so aptly applied to it in his letter. It is not, therefore, 

 the word forever, in this convention, which will secure to our fisher- 

 men, for all time the liberties stipulated and recognised in it; but it 

 was introduced by our negotiators, and admitted by those of Great 

 Britain as a warning that we shall never consider the liberties secured 

 to us by it, as abrogated by mere war. They may, if they please, in 



