ARGUMENT OF SIR JAMES WINTER. 987 



and the natives of the United States are now consequently disap- 

 pointed, and discontented, at not continuing to enjoy that wh. they 

 had as they conceived only apparently covenanted to give up. Mr. 

 Eush in his Memoirs, page 400,- Cap. 19 claims credit for his astute- 

 ness in regard to this arrangement and the introduction into the 

 Treaty of a clause not found in the British contreprojet in the fol- 

 lowing words, 



" ' It was by our act that the United States renounced the right to 

 the fisheries not guaranteed to them by the Convention. That clause 

 did not find a place in the British contreprojet. We deemed it 

 proper under a threefold view : First, to exclude the implication of 

 the fisheries secured to us being a new grant; secondly, to place the 

 rights secured and renounced on the same footing of permanence; 



thirdly, that it might expressly appear that our renunciation 

 593 was limited to three miles from the coasts.' This last point 



we deemed of the more consequence from our -fishermen having 

 informed us that the whole fishing ground on the coasts of Nova 

 Scotia extended to a greater distance than ' three miles ' from the 

 land : whereas along the coasts of Labrador it was almost universally 

 close in with the coast." 



This, I respectfully submit, brings us up to a point where the 

 intention of the parties the clear manifest intention of the parties 

 is expressed, is reduced to words, and set forth clearly and beyond 

 question in the terms of the treaty itself. We have here a clear, 

 satisfactory and abundant statement, setting before us what was 

 present in the minds of the parties themselves ; not a mere matter of 

 inference from the construction of words. We have here the clearest 

 testimony, I respectfully submit, as to what was actually passing in 

 the minds of the negotiators themselves at the time they drew this 

 treaty. Our contention is that they reduced into plain, clear, une- 

 quivocal language exactly what they intended. 



Two things are abundantly manifest. First, that the negotiations 

 related, so far as this part of the fisheries was concerned (and when 

 I say this part of the fisheries I refer to the Newfoundland and Lab- 

 rador coasts) only to the cod fishery. There was no other fishery at 

 that time worth talking about, so far as I can understand, except the 

 mackerel fishery, which was not in the waters of Newfoundland, or 

 on that part of the coast. It was clearly only the cod fishery all 

 through that the parties had in view. 



And, secondly, that there was this broad difference or distinction 

 between the conditions of the coast of Labrador, and that of all other 

 parts of the coast of Newfoundland or elsewhere; that in all other 

 parts except Labrador, the cod fish is found only in deep water, and 

 almost entirely more than 3 miles outside of the coast. When they 

 do come within 3 miles of the coast, it is in comparatively small 

 quantities at any rate in that part of the coast. As I have said 

 already, on the headlands near the headlands on each side of the 

 bays of Newfoundland, the cod fish do come in to the coast, within 3 



