1718 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



THE PRESIDENT : On one side the word " forever " was suggested, 

 and on the other side " in common with British subjects." So that 

 one was a concession made to the British negotiators, and the other 

 a concession made to the American negotiators. We have no proto- 

 col of this conference, but it might be supposed they were mutual 

 concessions. 



SIR W. ROBSON: I am much obliged for the suggestion. They 

 both come in together. Of course they are introduced at the same 

 time. 



THE PRESIDENT: Not introduced together. 



SIR W. ROBSON: But they both come in together, and one may 

 assume, as I have in argument, when two clauses of that kind come 

 in together they have some connection. 



There is just one point that Mr. Peterson reminds me I had not 

 mentioned, and he thinks I ought to mention it. It is not on this 

 particular point but connected with the negotiations. It has refer- 

 ence to what Mr. Rush says in his letter of the 12th August, 1824, p. 

 122, United States Counter-Case Appendix, touching the contro- 

 versy with France about the right of America to go on the western 

 shore. The Tribunal will remember that the words " in common " 

 are now stated by the United States to have been introduced in order 

 to exclude the notion of an exclusive right in the United States, be- 

 cause the French, who had got the liberty to fish on the western 

 coast, were then claiming an exclusive right. According to Mr. 

 Turner's argument these words were brought in to prevent the 

 Americans doing what the parties knew the French had been doing 

 setting up an exclusive right. I have dealt with that point, and I 

 have said that it was a very remote and conjectural reason for put- 

 ting in the words, but I am now reminded that the Americans, at the 

 time they admitted the words " in common " into the treaty, did not 

 know that the French were claiming an exclusive right at all, be- 

 cause Mr. Rush, at p. 122, said that : 



" The pretension of France to an exclusive fishery was not to be 

 supported. I admitted, as one of the American negotiators of the 

 convention of 1818, that we had heard of the French right at that 

 time, but never that it was exclusive. Such an inference was contra- 

 dicted not only by the plain meaning of the article in the convention 

 of 1818, but by the whole course and spirit of the negotiation, which, 

 it was well known, had been drawn out into anxious and protracted 

 discussions upon the fishery question." 



So that now it appears that the reason suggested by the United 

 States for introducing the words " in common " is more improbable 

 than ever. Instead of them having been introduced in order to pre- 

 vent the United States from doing that which the French had done 

 we know from one of the negotiators that they never knew that the 



