ARGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1173 



Aberdeen the fact that nothing had occurred to change the determina- 

 tion of the Government of the United States that its fishing- vessels 

 had a right to resort to those waters, and other waters of that char- 

 acter, as a matter of right ; and that the concession, while not rejected 

 in any unfriendly spirit, could not be accepted as a concession, but 

 that the United States would continue to assert its rights. 



I now pass to the consideration of the decisions in the cases of the 

 " Washington " and the "Argus," which were seized in 1843 and 1844, 

 for the purpose, as has appeared from the evidence before this Tribu- 

 nal, of making test cases. The Tribunal is, undoubtedly, entirely 

 familiar with the fact that these decisions were the decisions of an 

 Umpire, under the Claims Convention of 1853 between the United 

 States and Great Britain, both nations having submitted to a joint 

 commission all claims of the citizens or subjects of either country 

 which had arisen after the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. 



The two Commissioners appointed by the respective Governments 

 differed on the question. The opinion, however, of the Commissioner 

 in behalf of the United States, Mr. Upham, is printed in full at 

 p. 212 of the Appendix to the Case of Great Britain before this 

 Tribunal, and there is no decision in that Appendix or elsewhere by 

 the Commissioner in behalf of Great Britain. The decisions by the 

 Umpire the Commissioners having disagreed are found at pp. 

 131 to 133 inclusive of the Case of the United States, and if it please 

 the Tribunal, I desire to read them : 



"The schooner Washington was seized by the revenue schooner 

 Julia, Captain Darby, while fishing in the Bay of Fundy, ten miles 

 from the shore, on the 10th of May, 1843, on the charge of violating 

 the treaty of 1818. She was carried to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and 

 there decreed to be forfeited to the crown by the judge of the vice 

 admiralty court, and with her stores ordered to be sold. The owners 

 of the Washington claim for the value of the vessel and appur- 

 tenances, outfits and damages, $2,483, and for eleven years interest 

 $1,638, amounted together to $4,121. By the recent reciprocity treaty, 

 happily concluded between the United States and Great Britain, 

 there seems no chance for any future disputes in regard to the fisher- 

 ies. It is to be regretted, that in that treaty, provision was not made 

 for settling a few small claims of no importance in a pecuniary sense, 

 which were then existing, but as they have not been settled, they are 

 now brought before this commission. 



" The Washington fishing schooner was seized, as before stated, in 

 the Bay of Fundy, ten miles from the shore, off Annapolis, Nova 

 Scotia. 



" It will be seen by the treaty of 1^83, between Great Britain and 

 the United States, that the citizens of the latter, in common with the 

 subjects of the former, enjoyed the right to take and cure fish on the 

 shores of all parts of Her Majesty's dominions in America, used by 

 British fishermen ; but not to dry fish on the island of Newfoundland, 

 which latter privilege was confined to the shores of Nova Scotia in 



