1090 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



This, as I have said, was also a boundary treaty, and the position 

 of the United States regarding the nature of such treaties is clearly 

 shown by the note of James Buchanan when Secretary of State of 

 the United States, to Mr. Oampton, the Minister for Great Britain 

 in Washington, which will be found in the Appendix to the Counter- 

 Case of the United States on p. 624. 



Mr. Crampton had made an enquiry of Mr. Buchanan concerning 

 this treaty between the United States and Mexico for the purpose of 

 ascertaining what it meant as against Great Britain's right to navi- 

 gate the waters into which the boundary-line was extended. 



Mr. Buchanan, in his note, replied to Mr. Crampton: 



" In answer, I have to state, that the stipulation in the treaty can 

 only affect the rights of Mexico and the United States. It is for 

 their mutual convenience it has been deemed proper to enter into 

 such an arrangement, third parties can have no just cause of com- 

 plaint. The Government of the United States never intended by this 

 stipulation to question the rights which Great Britain or any other 

 Power may possess under the law of nations." 



I proceed now to a citation directly concerning the treaty of 1846 

 between the United States and Great Britain, known as the Oregon 

 Boundary Treaty. 



During the argument in the Fur-Seal Arbitration in Paris in 1893, 

 in response to an enquiry by one of the Arbitrators as to whether this 

 treaty of 1846 did not divide the Straits of Juan de Fuca between 

 the two Powers, Sir Charles Russell, in behalf of Great Britain, made 

 a statement which will be found in vol. XIII of the American reprint 

 of those proceedings, p. 79 : 



" In the first place I should require to know a little more about the 

 precise circumstances of the water which is called the Straits of Juan 

 de Fuca, which leave Puget Sound on the one hand and pass Victoria 

 on the other: whether or not it came within the category of land- 

 locked waters, and so forth. 



" SENATOR MORGAN : They are not land-locked waters." 



Senator Morgan was one of the Arbitrators appointed by the 

 United States. 



"SiR CHARLES RUSSELL: I am merely suggesting that I should 

 require to know more about this before expressing an opinion. 



" SENATOR MORGAN : The lakes are 1 think." 



657 Senator Morgan evidently referred to some lakes that are 

 land-locked and have nothing to do with this question. I do 

 not know what lakes he had in mind. 



" SIR CHARLES RUSSELL : I should then require to know how far 

 the concurrence of other nations had been given to the arrangement 

 made between the two Powers who owned the adjoining territory; 

 and lastly I should express the opinion, for what that opinion is 

 worth, that if that could be properly called the ' high sea,' and other 



