1098 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



Mr. Adams was not labouring under any misapprehension two 

 days after the signing of the treaty. And a little further down in 

 that letter he states: 



" It was termed a liberty because it was a freedom to be enjoyed 

 within a special jurisdiction; the fisheries on the Banks were termed 

 rights because they were to be enjoyed on the ocean, the common 

 jurisdiction of all nations;" 



Mr. President, we are not confined to the correspondence between 

 Mr. Russell and Mr. Adams, or to the memoirs of Mr. Adams, or to 

 the letter just read, in order to show that there was no broad asser- 

 tion of jurisdiction over waters adjacent to the shores of the British 

 possessions in North America by the British Government through the 

 negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent. 



The Tribunal has now before it a portion of the instructions of 

 Lord Castlereagh and Lord Bathurst to the Commissioners appointed 

 to negotiate at Ghent. These instructions have been found amongst 

 the letters and despatches of Lord Castlereagh, published in London 

 in 1853, and on p. 4 of the pamphlet submitted to the Tribunal con- 

 taining these instructions is an instruction from Lord Castlereagh 

 to the British Commissioners in the terms which the Tribunal will 

 recall. And it will also be recalled that in a later instruction ap- 

 pearing at p. 9 of that pamphlet, Lord Bathurst instructed the Com- 

 missioners that the usual maritime jurisdiction of one league was 

 common to the two Powers unless modified by treaty. 



In this connection I desire to submit the observation of Sir Charles 

 Russell in the Behring Sea Arbitration, appearing at p. 318 of vol. 

 XIII of the American reprint, where Sir Charles Russell, after read- 

 ing this very instruction from Lord Castlereagh to the Commissioners 

 at Ghent, stated at the top of p. 318 



First I would direct the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that 

 in the reprint of these Proceedings of the Behring Sea Tribunal there 

 is an evident error, in that Sir Charles Russell's observation is printed 

 as a part of Lord Castlereagh's instruction. The observation is 

 plainly to be distinguished from the terms of the instruction of Lord 

 Castlereagh for if the Tribunal will compare the extract from the 

 instruction, as read by Sir Charles Russell, with the instruction 

 printed in the pamphlet now before this Tribunal, it will be observed 

 that they agree exactly down to the point where Sir Charles Russell 

 makes this observation, after reading from Lord Castlereagh's in- 

 struction : 



" You will see it is an entirely erroneous view to suggest that at 

 any time and in any part of this discussion, Great Britain was assert- 

 ing that the open sea was not open to all mankind as between the 

 United States and herself, or that she was conferring upon the 

 United States a privilege which she did not have as a general 

 right." 



