1370 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



i 



that these Our Letters Patents shall not in any manner Enure or be 

 taken to abridge bar or hinder any of Our loveing Subjects whatso- 

 ever to vse and exercise the Trade of Fishing vpon the Coasts of 

 New England but that they and every of them shall have full and 

 free power and Libertie to continue and vse their said Trade of Fish- 

 ing vpon the said Coasts in any of the seas there vnto adjoyning or 

 any Arms of the said Seas or Salt Water Rivers where they have 

 been wont to fish "- 



827 I call attention to the use of the words " full and free 

 power " of fishing, because, as we shall see, they did not, in 

 the estimate of those affected by them, at all mean that the fisheries 

 should be unregulated by the respective possessors of them. 



It may be suggested, Sirs, that what I am now submitting to the 

 Tribunal is open to certain observations. It may be said that I am 

 showing the position as between the colonies of one Power and that 

 Senator Turner dealt with the relationship between independent 

 sovereignties. But, it is not at all with the purpose of discussing the 

 question of servitudes that I am referring to the position that ex- 

 isted at that time. It seems to me that it would be the relation be- 

 tween the colonies themselves and not their common relation to 

 another Power that would be of interest in the connection in which 

 I am referring to this subject; and when one remembers how com- 

 pletely the colonies were distinct and separate from one another, the 

 objection would lose almost all of its significance. Some members of 

 the Tribunal, if not all of them, are well aware that the colonies had 

 no connection with one another. They were not permitted to cor- 

 respond with one another. All their correspondence took place 

 through the Colonial Office in London. They had no union even for 

 defensive purposes, and when one of them, as it often happened, was 

 at war with the Indians, others were at peace and doing nothing. 

 The relations, therefore, were almost completely such as would have 

 existed as between perfectly independent nations. At all events, I 

 am merely showing what the existing circumstances were, and what 

 system it was that was familiar to these people when they made the 

 treaty of 1783. 



In order to show what was done in pursuance of these charters, I 

 refer to the British Case Appendix, pp. 770-776, where a number of 

 the laws that were made, regulative of the fisheries, are set out. Be- 

 fore reading those laws, may I give the dates of the charters of the 

 different colonies whose laws are before the Tribunal ? The charter 

 of New Plymouth is dated 1620; and as the Tribunal will observe that 

 was before the settlement of the free-fishing controversy. This 

 charter of New Plymouth was, moreover, not a charter direct from 

 the Crown, but was a sub-charter from the grantee of another 

 charter, the Plymouth charter of 1609. The Massachusetts' charters 

 were dated 1629 and 1691. The New Hampshire charter was dated 



