1434 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



while we, viewing them as rights existing before the treaty, and only 

 acknowledged by it, could not admit them to be forfeited without our 

 own assent." 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK : Do you not think, Mr. Ewart, that the 

 view of the United States, the later view of the United States with 

 respect to this theory, is more accurately expressed by Mr. Root, in 

 his letter to Sir Edward Grey of the 30th June, 1906? 



MR. EWART: Yes. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK : In that paragraph at the foot of p. 499 ? 



MR. EWART : Yes ; I will read that. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK: Does not that obviate the necessity of 

 going oack 



MR. EWART: I should like to complete this series of citations, if I 

 may. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK : I do not mean to interrupt you ; but it 

 seems to be found very clearly at that point. 



MR. EWART : Yes ; it is very clear there, and I will give that a little 

 later on. 



At p. 166, during the same controversy to which I last referred, at 

 the top of the page, I read : 



" By the third article of the preliminaries of November, 1782, and 

 also by the corresponding article of the definitive treaty of 1783, the 

 whole of the fishing rights and liberties were secured, and recognized 

 as rights and liberties, pre-existing, and not as temporary grants 



And, further down : 



"It was a continuance of possessions enjoyed before; and at the 

 same moment, and by the same act, under which the United States 

 acknowledged those coasts and shores as being under a foreign juris- 

 diction, Great Britain recognized the liberty of the people of the 

 United States to use them for purposes connected with the fisheries." 



At p. 168 : 



" We were instructed not to suffer our right to the fisheries to be 

 brought into discussion; we had no authority to admit any discrim- 

 ination between the first and the last parts of the third article of the 

 treaty of 1783. No power to offer or agree to an equivalent either 

 for the rights or the liberties. I consider both as standing on the 

 same footing: both as the continuance of franchises always enjoyed, 

 and the difference in the expressions only as arising from the oper- 

 ation of our change from the condition of British subjects to that of 

 a sovereign people, upon an object in one part of general, and in the 

 other of special, jurisdiction." 



In the United States Case Appendix, at p. 526, is the view which 

 Mr. Webster took of the situation : 



" Nothing can be more clear or definite than this Article." 



That is, the article quoted from the treaty of 1783 : 



" It admits a common right on the part of the Citizens of the United 

 States with the subjects of Great Britain. 



