1242 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



at pp. 174 and 175. That speech was before Mr. Webster when he 

 wrote his memorandum, and we may judge of what Mr. Webster 

 thought of the territorial idea, elaborated as it was with considerable 

 learning by Senator Soule a couple of weeks before, by the fact that 

 Mr. Webster does not say a word about it. 



Now, Sirs, it is interesting to see what the United States did as 

 between these two conflicting positions, when they formulated their 

 Case in the present arbitration. Looking over the history of what 

 had occurred, and observing that this "fishermen" idea had really 

 been discarded by Mr. Evarts, and that the United States, as the 

 United States, had formulated the territorial idea in the Halifax 

 proceedings, we thought that it was that idea that we should have to 

 contend against, and we accordingly quoted it in our Case as indi- 

 cating the position of the United States. We quoted the statement 

 that I have read from the Halifax proceeding, we quoted an extract 

 from the report of the Senate Committee, and we preceded those 

 quotations with the following statement to be found in the British 

 Case, p. 106 : 



"The contention of the United States, so far as it is at present 

 known to His Majesty's Government, is to be found in its 'answer' 

 laid before the Halifax Commission in 1877. It is as follows: 



Then we quoted it. 



" It is stated in the report of the Senate Committee of 1877 in the 

 following terms : 



And then we quoted it and continued as follows : 



" The contention in effect is that in 1818 when the convention was 

 entered into, no nation could claim territorial rights over bays, creeks, 

 or harbours on its coasts, if the lines between the headlands of such 

 waters were more than 6 marine miles in length." 



We went on to attack the two positions involved in that statement, 

 namely, whether the treaty can be read as meaning " territorial bays," 

 and secondly, whether " territorial bays " are only 6 mile bays. 



All our work seemed to be wasted, because when the United States 

 Case came in we found that they were away back to the abandoned 

 " fishermen " idea. I refer to the United States Case, at p. 248, para- 

 graph 5: 



" The position of the United States with reference to Question 5 

 is that the distance of ' three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, 

 creeks, or harbors ' referred to in the said Article, must be measured 

 from low water mark following the indentations of the coast; and 

 the United States requests the Tribunal to answer and decide this 

 Question accordingly. 



So that if the Tribunal answers the question as the United States 

 requested in its Case, it will adopt the " fishermen " theory, and not 



