306 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



to the Convention of 1818 ; and the Convention of 1818, in the opinion 

 of Mr. Adams, conceded to the United States all that they desired. 



He believed and asserted that Great Britain had claimed, and 

 184 intended to claim, exclusive jurisdiction over the Gulf of St. 



Lawrence and over the Banks of Newfoundland, and he con- 

 sidered and stated that the Treaty of 1818, in setting at rest for ever 

 those pretensions, obtained for the United States substantially what 

 they desired. A passage is quoted in the reply of Her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment to the United States Answer, from this book, in which Mr. 

 Adams says : " The Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Gulf of Saint Law- 

 rence and Labrador fisheries, are in nature and in consideration both 

 of their value and of the right to shart in them one fishery. To be 

 cut off from the enjoyment of that right would be to the people of 

 Massachusetts similar in kind and comparable in degree with an 

 interdict to the people of Georgia and Louisiana to cultivate cotton 

 or sugar. To be cut off even from that portion of which was within 

 the exclusive British jurisdiction in the strictest sense within the Gulf 

 of Saint Lawrence and on the coast of Labrador 'would have been 

 like an interdict upon the people of Georgia or Louisiana to cultivate 

 cotton or sugar in three-fourths of those respective States." But he 

 goes on to speak of the warning off of American vessels sixty miles 

 from Newfoundland, and then says : " It was this incident which led 

 to the negotiations which terminated in the Convention of the 20th 

 of October, 1818. In that instrument, the United States renounced 

 forever that part of the fishing liberties which they had enjoyed or 

 claimed in certain parts of the exclusive jurisdiction of the British 

 Provinces, and within three marine miles of the shores. This privi- 

 lege, without being of much use to our 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 other parts 

 of the British jurisdiction forever." 



Fishing for mackerel in ten fathoms of water off the bight of Prince 

 Edward Island was not the thing then taken into consideration. 

 There was no mackerel fishery till many years after. This contro- 

 versy was caused by a claim on the one hand and a resistance on the 

 other with reference to the ocean fisheries, to the cod fishery, the whale 

 fishery, the deep-sea fishery, three leagues, fifteen leagues, sixty 

 miles from the shore; and after the Convention of 1818 had been 

 formed, if it had been construed as the British Government construe 

 it to-day, there would have been no more controversy on the subject. 

 ******* 



In the first place, I suppose I may as well take up the case of New- 

 foundland. The case of Newfoundland, as I understand it, is almost 

 entirely eliminated from this controversy by the decision which was 

 made on the 6th of September. The claim as presented in Her Maj- 

 esty's Case, is not one of compensation for fishing within the terri- 

 torial waters of Newfoundland, but it is one of enjoying the privileges 

 of commercial intercourse with the people of that island. Of terri- 

 torial fishing in Newfoundland waters, there is hardly any evidence 

 to be found since the first day of July, 1873, when the fishery clauses 

 of the Treaty of Washington took effect, with one exception, that I 

 will allude to hereafter. There is certainly no cod-fishing done by 

 our people in the territorial waters of Newfoundland ; none has been 



