1864 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



quently added as a mere etcetera, a mere part of the more general 

 term, because there we were giving the right. Now we are going to 

 withhold the right. And we intimate that it shall be withheld on 

 the coasts which are not given to them by treaty, and also particu- 

 larly withheld so far as the bays are concerned. The word " bay " 

 begins to be more important than the word " coasts," and now I will 

 ask the Tribunal in following this now so familiar evidence to see 

 how the word " bay " becomes the dominant word in this enumera- 

 tion of " coasts, bays, &c." " Bays " are the things they begin now 

 to think about, and to take care about. I will in the course of deal- 

 ing with this correspondence draw particular attention to those 

 passages in which it will be seen that Great Britain demanded the 

 renunciation. There are three or four of those passages to which 

 I will draw attention as we come to them chronologically. 



Mr. Warren put in this excellent little booklet I will call it: 

 " Notes from the Letters and Despatches of Lord Castlereagh," and 

 if the Tribunal will kindly take p. 4 of that and refer to one passage, 

 it will make my point clear throughout the succeeding letters. 



Lord Castlereagh is writing to His Majesty's Commissioners ap- 

 pointed to negotiate, and the letter is the 28th July, 1814. He says 

 on p. 4, speaking of the fishery, at the second paragraph [Appendix 

 (A) , infra, p. 1356]: 



" But the point, upon which you must be quite explicit, from the 

 outset of the negociation, is the construction of the Treaty of 1783, 

 with relation to the Fisheries. You will observe that the third Arti- 

 cle of that Treaty consists of two distinct branches : the first, which 

 relates to the open sea Fishery, we consider a permanent obligation, 

 being a recognition of the general right which all nations have to 

 frequent and take fish in the high seas." 



Now, the first one to be remembered was the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 in the bank fisheries : 



" The latter branch " 



That included the bays and creeks. The latter branch was the lib- 

 erty as opposed to the right. 



" The latter branch is, on the contrary, considered as a mere con- 

 ventional arrangement between the two States, and, as such, to have 

 been annulled by the war. This part of the Treaty has been found 

 to be productive of so much inconvenience, as to determine his 

 Majesty's Government not to renew the provisions of it in their 

 present form ; nor do they feel themselves called upon to concede to 

 the Americans any accommodation within the British Sovereignty, 

 except upon the principle of a reasonable equivalent in frontier, or 

 otherwise; it being quite clear that, by the law of nations, the sub- 

 jects of a foreign State have no right to fish within the maritime 

 jurisdiction, much less to land on the coasts belonging to his Bri- 

 tannic Majesty, without an express permission to that effect." 



