ARGUMENT OF JOHN S. EWABT. 1323 



formed between the United States and Great Britain, such were the 

 claims of England, and those claims had been acquiesced in by 

 France and by Spain." 



I read from the British Case Appendix, p. 75, the statement of 

 Mr. John Quincy Adams in his letter to Viscount Castlereagh in 

 1816 : 



798 " The fisheries on the Banks of Newfoundland, as well in the 

 open seas, as in the neighbouring bays, gulfs, and along the 

 coasts of Nova Scotia and Labrador, were, by the dispensations and 

 the laws of nature, in substance, only different parts of one fishery. 

 Those of the open sea were enjoyed not as a common and universal 

 right of all nations; since the exclusion from them of France and 

 Spain, in whole or in part, had been expresslv stipulated by those 

 nations, and no other nation had, in fact, participated in them. It 

 was, with some exceptions, an exclusive possession of the British na- 

 tion ; and in the treaty of separation it was agreed " 



and so on. 



I quote next from the American reprint of the Behring Sea Arbi- 

 tration, vol. ix, p. 156. This is the printed Argument put in by the 

 United States in the Behring Sea Case: 



" It was contended by Great Britain and conceded by the United 

 States that all those fisheries, both within and without the line of 

 territorial jurisdiction, were previous to the revolutionarj' war, the 

 exclusive property of Great Britain, as an appurtenant to its terri- 

 tory. On this point there was no dispute, although the fisheries in 

 question extended in the open sea almost five degrees of latitude from 

 the coast, and along the whole northern coast of New England, Nova 

 Scotia, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Labrador." 



Then, omitting a few sentences, the Argument continues in this 

 way: 



" Which side of this contention was right, it is quite foreign to the 

 present purpose to consider. It is enough to perceive that it never 

 occurred to the United States Government or its eminent representa- 

 tives to claim, far less to the British Government to concede, nor to 

 any diplomatist or writer, either in 1783 or 1815, to conceive, that 

 these fisheries, extending far beyond and outside of any limit of terri- 

 torial jurisdiction over the sea that ever was asserted there or else- 

 where, were the general property of mankind, or that a participation 

 in them was a part of the liberty of the open sea. If that proposi- 

 tion could have been maintained, the right of the Americans would 

 have been plain and clear. No treaty stipulations would have been 

 necessary at the end of either war." 



I now wish to say a few words in reference to the remarks which 

 Mr. Warren made in relation to the Behring Sea Case. He thought 

 that the quotations which we had given in our Appendix were cal- 

 culated to produce an erroneous impression. I concede, entirely, 

 most of what Mr. Warren said, and I distinctly agree that Mr. 



