ARGUMENT OF JOHN S. EWAET. 1321 



action) had accepted the 3-mile rule. But if I can establish that, in 

 1783, there was no rule at all, and that the word " bays " meant the 

 same thing in 1818 as it did in 1783, then, I think that I obviate all 

 difficulty. Even if I should fail in that, I am still a long way from 

 failing in the next position I should take, and that is that after all 

 unindented coasts have nothing to do with the case. This is a 

 question of what the agreement was as to bays, and I think I can 

 fairly say that no nation, up to the present time, has ever applied 

 the 3-mile limit to its own bays, whatever it may think of other 

 peoples. 



Now, Mr. Warren tried to make a distinction between the treaties 

 of 1783 and 1818 ; but the draughtsman of the United States Argu- 

 ment had not thought of any such distinction, and, I submit, that 

 there is none. In the first place, there is the recital in the treaty of 

 1818, which recites that differences have arisen respecting coasts and 

 bays, so that the word bays is carried over in the recital from one 

 treaty to another. Then, in the following pages of the United 

 States Argument the Tribunal will find that the United States 

 insists that the language in one treaty is to be judged by the language 

 of the other pp. 143, 144, 147, 228, 229, and 230. The only page 

 I shall read from is 230, about the middle of the page: 



" If any further evidence were needed that the negotiators were 

 following literally the treaty of 1783, the almost identical lan- 

 797 guage used concerning the right to dry and cure fish would 

 furnish it. Even the peculiar phrase ' without a previous 

 agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors or pos- 

 sessors of the ground,' is copied almost verbatim. 



" It is submitted, then, that the treaty of 1818 was in many respects 

 a Chinese copy of the treaty of 1783." 



Now, Sirs, I wish to mention very hurriedly the circumstances 

 which, I think, enable me to say that in 1783 there was no agreement 

 amongst the nations as to unindented coasts. 



In 1697, by the Treaty of Kyswick, Nova Scotia was restored to 

 France, and Sabine indicates that the next war was because of the 

 claim which France advanced to the sole ownership of the Newfound- 

 land fisheries. These were the fisheries out on the sea. 



In 1713 came the Treaty of Utrecht, by which the French were 

 excluded to a distance of 30 leagues. 



In 1763 Canada was ceded by the French to the British, and the 

 French were excluded to a distance of 3 leagues from the shores 

 in the gulf, 15 leagues from Cape Breton and 30 leagues from Nova 

 Scotia and south of that. 



In 1776 the United States proposed to France that, in the event 

 of the lion being slain, they should divide its hide between them, by 

 which, of course, I mean divide the fisheries. 



