ARGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1103 



itly manifested her intention concerning it; that this subject, as I 

 dou bless knew, had excited a great deal of feeling in this country, 

 perhaps much more than its importance deserved; but their own fish- 

 ermen considered it as an excessive hardship to be supplanted by 

 American fishermen, even upon the very shores of the British do- 

 minions." 



It does not appear reasonable, I respectfully submit, if Great Brit- 

 ain intended to claim exclusive jurisdiction in respect to the fisheries, 

 as against the people of the United States, over the great outer bays, 

 that the claim would be put forward in the statement made by Lord 

 Bathurst in this interview. 



On p. 268 of the Appendix to the Case of the United States is to 

 be found a note from Mr. Adams to Lord Bathurst which contains, 

 on p. 269, the extract which I read yesterday embodying Mr. 

 Adams's statement to Lord Bathurst of what Mr. Adams understood 

 Lord Bathurst to have said in the interview that immediately pre- 

 ceded the letter. And I called the fact to the attention of the Tri- 

 bunal when stating briefly the claim of Great Britain, that this letter 

 from Mr. Adams was in pursuance of a formal notice to Lord Bath- 

 urst that Mr. Adams intended to incorporate in a note the substance 

 of the interview between him and Lord Bathurst. 



There is one paragraph on p. 269 in this note from Mr. Adams to 

 Lord Bathurst that I wish to read : 



" But, in disavowing the particular act of the officer who had pre- 

 sumed to forbid American fishing vessels from approaching within 

 sixty miles of the American coast, and in assuring me that it had been 

 the intention of this Government, and the instructions given by your 

 lordship, not even to deprive the American fishermen of any of their 

 accustomed liberties during the present year, your lordship did also 

 express it as the intention of the British Government to exclude the 

 fishing vessels of the United States, hereafter, from the liberty of 

 fishing within one marine league of the shores of all the British terri- 

 tories in North America, and from that of drying and curing their 

 fish on the unsettled parts of those territories, and, with the consent 

 of the inhabitants, on those parts which have become settled since the 

 peace of 1783." 



The contents of Lord Bathurst's answer to Mr. Adams' note is most 

 important. The answer will be found on p. 273 of the Appendix to 

 the Case of the United States. Lord Bathurst was writing under 

 date the 30th October, 1815 : 



"The undersigned, one of His Majesty's principal Secretaries of 

 State, had the honor of receiving the letter of the minister of the 

 United States, dated the 25th ultimo, containing the grounds upon 

 which the United States conceive themselves, at the present time, 

 entitled to prosecute their fisheries within the limits of the British 

 sovereignty, and to use British territories for purposes connected with 

 the fisheries." 



92909 S. Doc. 870, 61-3, vol 10 14 



