ARGUMENT OF JOHN S. EWAET. 1405 



ish and Americans were operating side by side, some regulations were 

 necessary and so they were made, but, on the French shore, where the 

 French had the right of precedence, if not an exclusive right, such 

 regulations were not necessary and were never made. 



A good reply in this regard is that if it is some argument that we 

 did not enforce our position against the French fishermen, it is quite 

 obvious that the United States never enforced theirs; and so far 

 from asserting the sovereignty which they now say the United States 

 has as against us, they appealed to the British sovereignty, which 

 they then acknowledged, for protection for themselves. It is per- 

 fectly manifest that the idea of United States sovereignty in British 

 waters had never occurred to Mr. Adams or Mr. Rush or Mr. Galla- 

 tin, those three particularly able men, when the French vessels were 

 turning American vessels off the coasts and out of the bays of New- 

 foundland, and when these men appealed not to war, as they might 

 have done, and to their own sovereignty, but appealed to British 

 sovereignty. 



The quotations which Sir Robert Finlay gave to the Tribunal from 

 the letters of Gallatin, Adams and Rush, have taken on an added 

 significance since the development of the United States Argument 

 at the hands of Senator Turner. If Senator Turner's view had 

 been then entertained by the United States they would, in the exer- 

 cise of their own sovereignty because they claim that they would 

 have as much sovereignty in British waters now as we have have 

 upheld their own rights as against the Frenchmen. Instead of doing 

 that, they appealed to the British Government and asked for sup- 

 port, insisting that the British Government should exercise its sov- 

 ereignty a sovereignty which appeared to them, I submit, to be 

 exclusive. I just refer to the citations because they may be useful in 

 this connection, and pass on. There is the letter from Mr. Gallatin 

 to Mr. Rush in the British Case Appendix, at p. 102 ; the letter from 

 Mr. Gallatin to Viscount de Chateaubriand, British Case Appendix, 

 p. 105 ; the letter from Mr. Adams to Mr. Rush, British Case Appen- 

 dix, p. 107, and the letter from Mr. Rush to Mr. Canning, British 

 Case Appendix, p. 111. 



I now wish to call the attention of the Tribunal to three letters in 

 the correspondence. They have been read, but not in this connection, 

 and I am not sure that their pertinency has, for that reason, been 

 observed. I desire first to refer to Mr. Vail's report of 1839 (British 

 Case Appendix, p. 118). This is his report to the President of the 

 United States in connection with the recent seizures. I read the third 

 paragraph from the bottom of the page : 



" It does not appear that the stipulations in the article above quoted 

 have, since the date of the convention, been the subject of conflicting 

 questions of right between the two Governments. The rights of the 



