1432 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



the treaty was a grant from us of Canada, Nova Scotia, Eng- 

 865 land, Scotland, and Ireland to the Britons. The treaty was 



nothing more than mutual acknowledgment of antecedent 

 rights." 



I next read from the British Counter-Case Appendix, p. 150, the 

 report of the United States Commissioners of 1814, the second sen- 

 tence from the top of the page : 



" In consenting, by that treaty, that a part of the North American 

 continent should remain subject to the British jurisdiction, the people 

 of the United States had reserved to themselves the liberty, which 

 they had ever before enjoyed, of fishing upon that part of its coasts, 

 and of drying and curing fish upon the snores, and this reservation 

 had been agreed to by the other contracting party." 



That is peculiarly significant, because it was at the negotiations at 

 Ghent that this partition and continuation of liberty theory was 

 originated. 



Then, from Mr. John Quincy Adams, in the British Counter-Case 

 Appendix, p. 147, about the middle of the page, commencing a para- 

 graph, I read: 



" I said " 



That was during a conference between Mr. John Quincy Adams 

 and his colleagues at Ghent 



" there was no grant of new privileges in the treaty. The liberties, as 

 well as the rights, were merely a continuation of what had always 

 been enjoyed. It was necessary for the fishermen to go to the part of 

 the coast frequented by the fish, and when, by the independence of the 

 United States, it became a foreign jurisdiction, we had a right to 

 reserve the liberty of continuing to fish there, and the circumstance of 

 the jurisdiction alone occasioned the change of the expression." 



In British Case Appendix, p. 65, may be found another statement 

 by Mr. John Quincy Adams, a little below the middle of the page. 

 This is in Mr. Adams's letter to Mr. Monroe : 



" It was obvious that the treaty of peace of 1783 was not one of 

 those ordinary treaties which, by the usages of nations, were held 

 to be annulled by a subsequent war between the same parties : it was 

 not simply a treaty of peace ; it was a treaty of partition between two 

 parts of one nation, agreeing thenceforth to be separated into two 

 distinct sovereignties. The conditions upon which this was done 

 constituted, essentially, the independence of the United States; and 

 the preservation of all the fishing rights, which they had constantly 

 enjoyed over the whole coast of North America, was among the most 

 important of them." 



In the same volume, at p. 67, in the middle of the page, I read : 



" It was, doubtless, upon considerations such as these that, in the 

 treaty of peace between His Majesty and the United States of 1783, 

 an express stipulation was inserted, recognising the rights and liber- 

 ties which had always been enjoyed by the people of the United 

 States in these fisheries, and declaring that they should continue to 



