ARGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1135 



as to the fishing in the open sea, and the second branch as to the 

 fishing 



"on the Coasts, Bays, and Creeks of all other of His Britannic Maj- 

 esty's Dominions in America." 



The British contention has been that the second of these branches has 

 been abolished b\ the war of 1812; and if, in the further corre- 

 spondence, they speak of fishing within the British jurisdiction, do 

 they not mean the fishing in the sense of the second branch of the 

 treaty of 1783, in contradistinction to the fishing in the sense of the 

 first branch of the treaty of 1783 ? 



MR. WARREX : If the President will permit me to read the question 

 submitted I should prefer to answer it when I have read it, as I did 

 not have the treaty of 1783 immediately before me when the question 

 was put. 



THE PRESIDENT : I can quite well conceive the difficulty in answer- 

 ing on the spur of the moment. 



MR. WARREX : I do observe in regard to the term " within the Brit- 

 ish jurisdiction " that it shows clearly that the extent of " the British 

 jurisdiction " was without the controversy altogether that had been 

 defined. The instructions given to the Commissioners and the cor- 

 respondence exchanged between the two Powers prior to the nego- 

 tiations had put that question entirely out of the discussion; that 

 was considered as settled and beyond controversy and " the 

 684 British jurisdiction " was understood to extend only 3 miles 

 from the shores, as now contended by the United States. I am 

 not going to delay the Tribunal to again state that contention. 



I call the attention of the Tribunal to one other paragraph in this 

 report of the British Commissioners. I am reading from the nine- 

 teenth line of the letter on p. 86 of the British Case Appendix. The 



British Commissioners stated that " they desired "- by " they " 



again the American Commissioners are intended 



" they desire to be understood, as in no degree abandoning the ground 

 upon which the right to the fishery had been claimed by the Govern- 

 ment of the United States, and only waiving discussion of it, upon the 

 principle that, that right was not to be limited in any way, which 

 should exclude the United States from a fair participation in the ad- 

 vantages of the fishery." 



If the renunciatory clause, as brought forward by the American 

 Plenipotentiaries, is to be construed as a virtual surrender of all 

 rights to the fisheries in the great bodies of water adjoining the 

 coasts of the British possessions in the North Atlantic, would the 

 British Commissioners have stated in this note to their Government 

 that the right to the fishery was not to be limited in any way which 

 would exclude the United States from a fair participation in the ad- 

 vantages of the fishery ? 



92909 S. Doc. 870, 61-3, vol 10 16 



