1808 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



I had better answer that question by at once dealing with the facts 

 to which it refers; because, after all, it is not much use answering 

 the question unless I deal with the basis of fact upon which it is 

 built. 



We say that the Americans did not, for the first time, by the treaty 

 of 1818, distinguish coasts and bays. It is a very essential part of our 

 argument, and I may be speaking too confidently I hope I am 

 1093 not if I say that we can put it beyond a doubt that, until the 

 negotiations before the treaty of 1818 I will not say in 1818, 

 but until the negotiations immediately anterior to that treaty the 

 distinction between coasts in general and that part of the coast to be 

 found within a bay the coast of embayed waters, to use an old ex- 

 pression had always been acknowledged by the United States. Mr. 

 Adams chose, in his letters, continually to drop out the word " bays " 

 when the word " bays " was put to him perhaps because it was not 

 immediately pertinent to the subject of his letter. As I have just 

 pointed out in the case of the " Jaseur," the quarrel did not turn on 

 bays. It turned upon the high seas against the inshore fisheries; 

 and I think that perhaps explains why he did not use it. But he did 

 not use it. But the words " maritime jurisdiction " which were used 

 by Mr. Adams, and on which Mr. Warren laid so much stress, I will 

 show beyond a doubt, to the knowledge of everybody on the United 

 States side and not only to the knowledge, but to the continual 

 assertion of everybody on the side of Great Britain expressly in- 

 cluded bays. I will show that everybody considered bays as being 

 part of our maritime jurisdiction. 



Mr. Warren thinks that maritime jurisdiction related only to the 

 3 miles around the coasts just like Mr. Adams, in the letter to which 

 Dr. Lohman has drawn my attention. Mr. Adams is speaking of 3 

 miles around the coast, but Mr. Adams did not mean to say that bays 

 were outside of our jurisdiction. He did not mean to cut bays out. 

 He could not have done so, when I come to show the letters which 

 had been brought to his knowledge before that time. He only used 

 that expression shortly, because it was sufficient for his immediate pur- 

 pose. He was comparing what was within our jurisdiction and what 

 was without our jurisdiction on the high seas, and he used the 3-mile 

 limit as a short and compendious way of referring to it. But Lord 

 Bathurst never accepted that, and I will show the letters we have 

 now got one which was missing all of which will prove conclusively 

 that Lord Bathurst laid the greatest stress on " bays " as being within 

 our jurisdiction, asserted it, and reasserted it again and again. 



So that my answer to the second question is that they did not for 

 the first tune acknowledge this distinction in 1818. They were ac- 

 knowledging a distinction in 1818 which they had never disputed, and 

 in every form had asserted, by international documents, by corre- 

 spondence, and by their conduct 



