1044 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



transmitted for your information ; and you were directed to conform 

 your language in your intercourse with the American Secretary of 

 State to the principles which had been brought forward in this cor- 

 respondence on the part of your Court." 



The letter from Lord Bathurst to Mr. Baker of the 7th Septem- 

 ber, 1815, on which counsel for Great Britain relies so much, consti- 

 tuted no part of the correspondence, although it was in accord with 

 the position of the United States as interpreted by Lord Bathurst 

 himself. It was to the correspondence between the American Minis- 

 ter in London and His Majesty's Government that Mr. Bagot was 

 referred, and he was directed " to conform your language in your 

 intercourse with the American Secretary of State to the principles 

 which had been brought forward in this correspondence on the part 

 of your Court." 



" This correspondence " included the letter of Mr. Adams to Lord 

 Bathurst, in which Mr. Adams had restated specifically what he un- 

 derstood Lord Bathurst to have stated in the interview preceding the 

 writing of the note. So that the " principles " by which Mr. Bagot 

 was to be guided were derived from the correspondence between 

 Mr. Adams and Lord Bathurst, and the discussion between them as 

 recorded in the note of Mr. Adams to Lord Bathurst. 



In May 1817, as appears in the Appendix to the United States Case 

 on p. 295, Lord Castlereagh, the Principal Secretary of State for 

 Foreign Affairs for Great Britain, took up the discussion with Mr. 

 Adams, and in a note bearing the date just stated he wrote : 



"As soon as the proposition which Mr. Bagot was authorized in 

 July last, to make to the Government of the United States, for ar- 

 ranging the manner in which American citizens might be permitted 

 to carry on the fisheries within the British limits, had been by them 

 declined," &c. 



Lord Castlereagh took up the subject where it had been left by 

 Lord Bathurst, and accepted Lord Bathurst's definition of the British 

 limits ; and from thence on in the negotiations the terms " exclusive 

 British jurisdiction," " British limits," " maritime limits," " exclusive 

 sovereignty of Great Britain " were used by the representatives of 

 the two Governments, and subsequently by the negotiators, in the 

 sense and in accordance with the understanding of these terms in the 

 interview between Lord Bathurst and Mr. Adams, and in the sense 

 stated in the letter from Mr. Adams to Lord Bathurst. 



In these notes and interviews is found a statement of the position 

 of Great Britain. They constitute the statement of the British claim. 

 American fishing-vessels would not be allowed to fish within the 

 creeks and close upon the shores of the possessions of Great Britain 

 in North America; nor would the Government of Great Britain 

 interrupt fishing beyond a marine league from the shore. 



