1300 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



' ; It is admitted that by these treaties, the right of approaching 

 immediately to, and using the shore for drying fish, is called a 

 liberty, & throughout this discussion it is important to keep up con- 

 stantly the plain distinction between an acknowledged right, and a 

 conceded liberty" 



I do not think it is necessary to finish that page, but on the next 

 page he commences with an analysis of the Adams-Bathurst corre- 

 spondence which continues down to the middle of p. 528; and then 

 I ask leave to read a few sentences : 



"And it was from these considerations that, in the Treaty of Peace 

 of 1783, an express stipulation was inserted, recognizing the rights 

 and liberties which had always been enjoyed by the people of the 

 United States in these fisheries, and declaring that they should con- 

 tinue to enjoy the right of fishing on the Grand Bank, and other 

 places of common jurisdiction on the North American coasts, to 

 which they had been accustomed while they themselves formed a 

 part of the British nation. It was a stipulation contained in a 

 Treaty by which the king of Great Britain acknowledged the United 

 States as free, sovereign and independent states; a treaty which, by 

 the common understanding & usage of civilized nations could 

 784 not be annulled by a subsequent war between the same parties. 

 The rights and liberties in the fisheries were, in no respect 

 granted by Great Britain to the United States, but they were ac- 

 knowledged as rights and liberties enjoyed before the separation of 

 the two countries, and which it was agreed should continue to be 

 enjoyed under the new relations, which were to subsist between 

 them." 



I need not pursue the memorandum; it is long, and I have suffi- 

 ciently indicated the line of argument that I think Mr. Webster in- 

 tended to pursue. As I have said it is remarkable for the two rea- 

 sons that I have mentioned. And the one which, of course, is im- 

 portant to us here, is his utter disregard of the only two contentions 

 that had ever been seriously put forward by the United States. It 

 substantiates also our view of his notice; because, although he is 

 attempting to draw an argument opposed to it, he evidently is not 

 satisfied in his own mind at the moment he did not finish it; it is 

 something which he had been trying to evolve as a basis for negotia- 

 tion afterwards. 



JUDGE GRAY : Do you understand that Mr. Webster's memorandum 

 tended to this conclusion: That the liberty that the inhabitants of 

 the United States had previously enjoyed under the treaty of 1783 

 was a liberty granted in that treaty by Great Britain as distinguished 

 from a right acknowledged to fish on the high seas in the first place ; 

 and that in the treaty of 1818 therefore the United States renounced 

 only what Great Britain had a right to grant, and that grant of 

 necessity related only to territorial waters. She could not grant a 

 liberty to the high seas. The fishing in non-territorial waters was a 



