ARGUMENT OF JOHN S. EWART. 1435 



" What those citizens and subjects had been accustomed to do, they 

 are to have a right to do thereafter. It is not a right granted, but 

 a right acknowledged and continued." 



867 At p. 528, Mr. Webster also says : 



" And it was from these considerations that, in the Treaty of 

 Peace of 1783, an express stipulation was inserted, recognizing the 

 rights and liberties which had always been enjoyed by the people of 

 the United States in these fisheries, and declaring that they should 

 continue to enjoy the right of fishing on the Grand Bank, and other 

 places of common jurisdiction on the North American coasts, to 

 which they had been accustomed while they themselves formed a part 

 of the British nation. It was a stipulation contained in a Treaty by 

 which the king of Great Britain acknowledged the United States as 

 free, sovereign and independent states; a treaty which, by the com- 

 mon understanding & usage of civilized nations could not be annulled 

 by a subsequent war between the same parties. The rights and lib- 

 erties in the fisheries were, in no respect granted by Great Britain to 

 the United States, but they were acknowledged as rights and liberties 

 enjoyed before the separation of the two countries, and which it was 

 agreed should continue to be enjoyed under the new relations, which 

 were to subsist between them." 



The Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, 

 in 1888, used somewhat similar language, as will be seen by reference 

 to the British Case Appendix, pp. 435 and 436. 



"As to the open-sea fishing, it was merely a recognition of a right 

 common to all nations, and as to the fishing within the municipal 

 dominion of His Majesty on his coasts, bays, and creeks, it was an 

 agreement that these rights theretofore existing in all British subjects 

 should of right belong to those British subjects who, by force of the 

 revolution, had become citizens of an independent nation; and thus 

 it was, in the partition of the territory, a reservation in favour of the 

 people of the United States of a right which they, as British subjects, 

 had theretofore lawfully enjoyed. 



" From 1783 until the war of 1812 between the two countries citi- 

 zens of the United States continued to enjoy the ancient rights be- 

 longing to them as subjects of Great Britain before the revolution 

 and reserved to them as citizens of the United States after it, with 

 the full freedom secured by the article last referred to." 



Language not at all dissimilar is used in the United States Case 

 before the conception of the servitude idea. I refer to the United 

 States Case, p. 9, commencing at the bottom of p. 8: 



" The United States and Great Britain thus met as independent 

 nations negotiating for the purpose of concluding a treaty of peace 

 dividing between them the British Empire in North America; and 

 standing on this basis the Commissioners on the part of the United 

 States asserted and insisted throughput the negotiations that the 

 British interests in the North Atlantic Coast fisheries were subject 

 to such division and that the pre-existing rights of the Colonies 

 therein must be recognized and continued by the treaty." 



