ARGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1197 



tions of the Senate in the United States. The extract appears at 

 p. 444 of the British Case Appendix, and reads as follows : 



" The question of the extent of territorial dominion, as it respects 

 the exercise of fishing rights in bays more than 6 miles wide indent- 

 ing the shores of the country, must of course be determined by the 

 law and practice of nations as they existed in the year 1818, at which 

 time, as the committee thinks, the 3-miles limit from shores was rec- 

 ognized without regard to large indenting bays, except under very 

 peculiar circumstances, such as the prescriptive exercise of dominion, 

 etc. Whether, in view of recent inventions in the implements of war- 

 fare, it may not be politic for maritime nations to agree upon an 

 enlargement of the boundaries of their territorial dominion seaward 

 is a question well worthy of consideration, but it has no place in 

 respect of the matters now in hand." 



I respectfully prefer the Tribunal to another extract from the 

 report of the committee, to be found on p. 449 of the Appendix to 

 the British Case, as follows: 



" This idea of concession was doubtless the ground and guide upon 

 which the treaty of 1818 was founded. At the time of that treaty 

 the United States claimed (and justly as the committee thinks) that 

 the fishing rights recognized by the treaty of 1783 on all the shores 

 of British North America were property rights and that they were 

 not lost by the war of 1812, and that after the treaty of peace of 

 1814, which made no mention of the subject, those rights existed with 

 all their original force. 



" The British Government insisted upon the contrary and that the 

 right of citizens of the United States to fish in any British North 

 American waters had been entirely lost. This led to a partition of 

 the disputed territory whether wise or unwise is immaterial to the 

 present question but in making this settlement the contracting 

 parties had evidently in view the then understood law of nations, 

 that territorial waters only extended to three miles from the shore; 

 and they also had in view the then existing state of treaty and legal 

 relations between Great Britain and the United States in respect of 

 intercourse between the British North American provinces and this 

 country, and the treaty provided in clear terms where, in British 

 waters, United States fishermen might fish and where they might 

 not." 



" The only possible question that could fairly arise under the treaty 

 of 1818 was the question what was a British bay. But the question, 

 as a practical one, has been in all the sixty-nine years since the mak- 

 ing of that treaty of little or no account ; for, so far as is known, the 

 only seizure of an American vessel by the British authorities for fish- 

 ing more than 3 miles from the shore in & bay more than 6 miles 

 wide was the seizure of the Washington, in 1843, and in that case, 

 as has been before stated, the international umpire decided the seizure 

 to have been an illegal and unjust one." 



And, finally, in regard to this treaty, I desire respectfully to refer 

 the Tribunal to the report of the Committee on Foreign Relations of 

 the United States Senate of the previous year, 1887, before the dis- 



