ARGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1047 



MR. WARREN: The letter from Lord Bathurst to Mr. Baker, on 



p. 64 of the Appendix to the British Case, Mr. President. 

 630 THE PRESIDENT: I understood you to mean the letter from 

 Mr. Baker, and I could not find one in that connection. 



MR. WARREN : Pardon me ; I mean the letter to Mr. Baker. I was 

 about to say that the letter from Mr. Baker to Mr. Monroe, the 

 American Secretary of State, regarding the " Jaseur " incident, is 

 printed on p. '264 of the Appendix to the United States Case, and 

 bears date the 31st August, 1815. Therefore, Mr. Baker had not 

 received the letter from Lord Bathurst which bears date the 7th Sep- 

 tember, 1815. He never took occasion to transmit any other letter 

 to the United States regarding the "- Jaseur " incident than the one 

 which bears date the 31st August, 1815. I desire to draw the atten- 

 tion of the Tribunal to this additional fact, to which I have already 

 alluded that in the transmission to Mr. Bagot of the instructions 

 from Lord Castlereagh, Appendix to British Counter-Case, p. 175, the 

 principles, by which Mr. Bagot was to be guided, were the principles 

 laid down in the notes passing between, and reports of the interviews 

 between Lord Bathurst and Mr. Adams, which are the notes to which 

 I have referred. 



It was asserted by Great Britain that the war of 1812 abrogated the 

 liberty of American fishing-vessels within the "territorial jurisdic- 

 tion " of Great Britain, which was stated to extend 3 marine miles 

 from the shore, and within which lay the harbours and creeks and 

 waters close upon the shore that were thereafter to be closed to the 

 fishing-vessels of the United States. 



Now, I wish here to ask : If the Government of Great Britain had 

 been advancing a claim to exclusive jurisdiction, in respect of the 

 fisheries, over large areas of water extending many miles from the 

 shore, would the claim have been stated in the terms employed by 

 Lord Bathurst, that is, that thereafter the vessels of the United 

 States would not be permitted to fish within the creeks and close 

 upon the shore of the British territories; nor would they be inter- 

 rupted in fishing without the territorial jurisdiction a marine league 

 from the shore? 



Thereafter, when Lord Castlereagh, or Lord Bathurst, or Mr. 

 Bagot, on the part of the Government of Great Britain, and Mr. Mon- 

 roe and Mr. Rush, on the part of the United States, and, later, when 

 the negotiators of the treaty of 1818 used the terms "territorial 

 jurisdiction," " exclusive jurisdiction of Great Britain," " maritime 

 limits," " within the British limits," " within the limits of the British 

 Sovereignty," and " His Britannic Majesty's Dominions in America," 

 they referred to a jurisdiction over the sea extending only 3 marine 

 miles from the shore of the possessions of Great Britain in North 

 America; and only bays, creeks, and harbours found therein were 

 included. 



