1828 NOBTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHEBIES ARBITRATION. 



any coast." The local authorities would say : " Well, we are very 

 curious about you; you have no right to touch our coast; you are not 

 trading and you say you are not fighting. What have we to do with 

 you? " Is the local authority then to come down and put a cutter <>r 

 war-ship next him to see what he is doing? No, they have alwav- 

 recognised it in that part of the world as their right to turn him out, 

 and by these treaties of 1686 and 1778 that is what they say they will 

 do. They say : " We will turn out any vessel from our bays as part 

 of our jurisdiction. We won't trouble to ask him any questions; we 

 are not to be put to the necessity of finding out his motives; we will 

 simply say that we have the right to turn him out." That is what is 

 meant by territoriality, and they could not be safe without some such 

 regulation in British North America, because the coast is so indented 

 that if the other nations of the world were admitted it might become 

 a subject of international conflict. The coast is so indented that 

 whereas they might make what laws they liked, and they might lay 

 down what principles they chose, the instinct of self-preservation in 

 British North America would make every Power on that coast close 

 its bays. Do you think that the United States would leave Delaware 

 or Chesapeake Bay open? They never intended to do it and they 

 never will do it. By this treaty of 1778 I have got the assent of the 

 United States to the principle for which I am contending. That is 

 why I told Dr. Lohman that I would show conclusively, not by argu- 

 ment, not by assertion on my part, but by admission on the part of 

 the United States, at a date close upon the treaty that is of 1783 

 that they regarded bays as being a part of the coast which must be 

 treated in a totally different way from the rest of the coast. I am 

 not putting, as I am sure will be appreciated, bays as if they did not 

 belong to the coast, as if they were something which is not coast. I 

 am only saying that they are a part of the coast treated differently 

 from the rest of the coast ; and when the treaty was made the United 

 States was one of the three Powers which alone were considered in 

 that part of the world, and it had by express admission committed 

 itself to that principle by the treaty of 1778. 



Then, I am also reminded that when I was dealing with the treaty 

 of 1763. I ought to have dealt with article 5 on the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence. In the treaty of 1763, p. 8 of the Appendix to the British 

 Case, it is provided that : 



"The subjects of France shall have the liberty of fishing and dry- 

 ing on a part of the coasts of the Island of Newfoundland, such as it 

 is specified in the Xlllth article of the treaty of Utrecht; which 



article is renewed and confirmed by the present treaty And 



His Britannic Majesty consents to leave to the subjects of the Most 

 Christian King the liberty of fishing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on 

 condition that the subjects of France do not exercise the said fishery 

 but at the distance of three leagues from all the coasts belonging to 



