ARGUMENT OF JOHN S. EWABT. 1345 



may assume that the judge who tried that man would answer it as 

 I suppose, the decision would form a valuable precedent for the con- 

 struction of later statutes to which I shall afterwards refer. 



The third feature in the situation in 1818, to which I wish to call 

 attention, and merely at the present moment to remind the Tribunal 

 of, is the exclusion by treaties from Newfoundland waters of the 

 French and of the Spanish. 



The fourth feature it also has only to be mentioned was the 

 difficulty of communication in those days as compared with the 

 present. Nowadays it is quite easy for numbers of Europeans to go 

 to the United States and to take occupation there. In earlier times 

 it was quite beyond the possibility of imagination that any fishermen 

 would be found in American fishing- vessels who were not inhabitants 

 of the United States. They might not be citizens of the United 

 States, but they would certainly be inhabitants of the United 

 812 States. And it is therefore impossible to believe that the 

 negotiators of the treaties of 1783 or 1818 contemplated the 

 possibility of non-inhabitants of the United States fishing in United 

 States vessels. 



The next feature of the situation, and the last which I wish to 

 recall to the recollection of the Tribunal, is the pleading of Mr. 

 Adams on behalf of the American fishermen. To his mind, the idea 

 had never presented itself of any other persons than American 

 fishermen fishing in American vessels. I merely give the citations of 

 the passages to which I refer because they have already been read to 

 the Tribunal. They occur in the letters from Mr. Adams to Lord 

 Bathurst (British Case Appendix, pp. 66, 68, and 69) and his letter 

 to Lord Castlereagh (British Case Appendix, p. 76). 



Summing up the situation, then, I would put it in this way : that 

 the personality of the fishermen was at that day extremely impor- 

 tant; that the 1699 statute prohibited aliens residing outside of the 

 specified limits from fishing; that the statutes of 1775 and 1786 pro- 

 hibited desertion from Newfoundland the 1786 statute penalising 

 the entry of Newfoundlanders into foreign service, which of course 

 would include United States service ; that by treaties the French and 

 Spanish fishermen had been excluded from the fisheries; that no- 

 body was asking admission to them except the American fishermen; 

 and. finally, that nobody contemplated Americans having in their 

 fishing-vessels any persons other than inhabitants of the United 

 States of America. 



Turning for a moment to the treaty of 1783, there are one or two 

 points to which I wish to call attention. The Tribunal is aware of 

 the nature of the recital of that statute, and the only other point 

 that I wish to refer to is the renunciation clause. Its form indicates 

 very clearly the total absence of any idea that non-inhabitants would 



