ARGUMENT OF SIB WILLIAM ROBSON. 1803 



ing, as I may say, a little elliptically, that is to say, he is not on 

 each occasion when he refers to our jurisdiction, describing it in 

 full, because it is not at that moment the immediate limit of the 

 jurisdiction that is under consideration, the question of bays was 

 not in his mind in those letters. In those letters he was dealing 



with the dispute that had arisen in relation to the " Jaseur." 

 1090 It will be remembered that in 1815 the " Jaseur " had been 



warning American vessels not to operate within 60 miles of 

 the coast; so that the question of bays in those letters was not in the 

 mind of Mr. Adams at all. And therefore, when he is referring to 

 our maritime jurisdiction as being within 3 miles of the coast, all 

 that he has "in his mind, all that he is thinking of, is : " You have 

 got a limited territorial water, but beyond that is the high seas. 

 And these vessels are being warned by the ' Jaseur ' off the high 

 seas." That is what he is protesting against at that time. I will 

 show quite conclusively that it had been brought to the knowledge 

 of Mr. Adams at that time or certainly (because I have the docu- 

 ments) to the knowledge of the Secretary of State for the United 

 States, Mr. Monroe, that in 1815, the Treaty of Ghent having been 

 concluded, and the treaty of 1818 not having come under negotiation, 

 it was the intention of England, expressed by Lord Bathurst in a 

 clear document, to exclude the United States from the bays. And 

 that very day that Mr. Adams is writing, the 25th September, the 

 letter of the 7th September which Lord Bathurst wrote to Mr. Baker, 

 saying that bays were to be excluded all in the same year, 1815 

 was on its way. was on the water on its way to Mr. Baker, telling 

 him what Lord Bathurst had also told Mr. Adams (though I think 

 he had not remembered it, or had not noticed it), that bays would in 

 future be included among the parts that United States vessels were 

 not to enter. That was in 1815, before this treaty began to be 

 negotiated. So that, if Mr. Adams had been thinking of bays, if 

 his attention had been directed to some capture which was in a bay, 

 he would then, undoubtedly, have given effect to the information 

 which he certainly had, that we meant to keep them not only 3 miles 

 from the coasts, but also that we meant to keep them out of the bays. 

 That deals with Mr. Adams's letter. 



The other part of the first question said : 



" Did not the disputes (previously to 1818) refer rather .... to 

 the right of fishing on the coast ? " 



Well, there one must remember that, under the treaty of 1783. no 

 distinction so far as fishing was concerned existed between bays and 

 coasts. So we must not look in the correspondence and letters under 

 that treaty for anything very explicit on that point. Under the 

 treaty of 1783 they had the right to fish along the coasts and in the 



