1854 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



it may retain them all, or it may part with one of them upon terms. 



Now, in 1782 or 1783 it parted with one of them. It parted 

 1121 with the right of fishing. And the only question is what it 



gave in 1783. I say it gave the right of fishing in the whole 

 of that bay. the Bay of Islands (indicating on map) ; that it nave 

 the right of fishing inside that bay. The United States say : " No. 

 It did not give the right of fishing inside that bay, because it had not 

 got it to give. It did not have the bay. All it had was a limit of 

 water around the coast." That is the part of the argument to which 

 I have been devoting so much attention. I say the first question T 

 have answered is: What had we to give in 1783? Had we bays, or 

 had we not? We acknowledged that we had not the banks to give. 

 We used to have them, or used to claim them. But we said : " We will 

 now acknowledge that, so far as the banks are concerned. \ve cannot 

 treat them as our private property any longer. We will therefore 

 acknowledge your right. We do not make any grant to you of bank- 

 fishing, but we acknowledge that, now that you have become an inde- 

 pendent nation, you will, with other nations, have the right to fish on 

 these banks." But, when it comes to bays, I say we did not acknowl- 

 edge their right to fish in them at all. We said : " We will there only 

 give you a liberty to fish; because we claim to own these bays. We 

 claim to be their master." And the question is: Had we any right 

 to make that claim? Therefore I have referred to the treaty and 

 showed that everybody said we had a right to make that claim. The 

 object of my argument now is to show that in 1783 the right to fish 

 in the bays was claimed by us and given by us: and then, in IMS. \\e 

 said to the United States: "We are not going to give you that right 

 any longer. We are going to give you a limited portion of that 

 right. We are going to give you that right over a limited area." 

 That is the better way of putting it. " But over the rest of the 

 area we shall insist that you abandon all the rights that we gave you 

 in 1783. And among the rights we <rave you in 1783 was fishing 

 inside these bays like Chaleur. Miramichi, and the other bay-." 



I say, therefore, once I establish that in 1783 I wa- master of the 

 bays, by the consent and with the acquiescence of America, it follows 

 that in 1783 they took their right from me, and not from inter- 

 national law. They were my bays, and I gave them the right to 

 enter, and when at last I said: " I am going to withdraw that right 

 from you; I am going to make you renounce it;" then they renounced 

 the right to fish in the bays. The argument about fishing and the 

 argument about territorial jurisdiction are, of course, exactly on the 

 same footing. I cannot establish my right to exclude them from the 

 bays in fishing unless I show that I had the right to do it: first of all, 

 that I had the power to give them the liberty, and afterwards that I 

 had the power to insist upon their renunciation of it. 



