1878 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



tory shall be accompanied by an express renunciation of the remain- 

 der. And therefore the idea which was taken by my learned friends 

 from the United States from the letter of Messrs. Rush and Gallatin 



is quite mistaken. Mr. Rush and Mr. Gallatin were, as I say, 

 1136 anxious to vindicate their sagacity. They are entitled to do 



that. They had had a hard task. They were making a treaty 

 under the most difficult circumstances. If they had stuck to their 

 point in 1814, when Napoleon was just returning from Elba, they 

 would then have had a better position, and would have been in better 

 circumstances for making their treaty with us. But we were very 

 firm about this fishing right. We felt that it was not good, having 

 these quarrels between fishermen in bays that it was a bad thing, 

 and we made up our minds that we would not have it continued. 

 We said: "We are going to assert our territorial jurisdiction over 

 our own bays, and we are going to keep you out" America had 

 allowed that thing to remain open. And then came 1816, when Eng- 

 land had not an enemy left, and when she was with her triumphant 

 navy still at its maximum power, her people accustomed to military 

 pursuits, and her armaments in first-rate condition. It was not a 

 good time for America then to try to improve her position. She 

 could not She not only could not improve her position ; she could 

 not keep it And she had to give up everything except this little 

 piece of the coast. She was afraid, as Mr. Adams shows, and as I 

 have just pointed out, that she would even lose her bank fishing. 

 But let it be said to the credit of English statesmen that, having 

 recognised that as part of the international sea, they did not wish 

 to go back on it, and they did not go back on it. Mr. Adams' alarms 

 were all ill-founded as far as the maritime limit was concerned. We 

 were quite content to take any maritime limit, whether it was 3 miles 

 or more. But as far as the bays were concerned we were inflexible. 

 We said : " We will not have it, because it promotes war instead of 

 promoting peace." It was necessary to us to have an express renun- 

 ciation, because Mr. Adams was so argumentative, and so persistent 

 in his argument that he would have kept on to the end of time, or to 

 the end of his time, and would have transmitted his argument to 

 somebody else to keep on saying: "The treaty of 1783 still stands 

 good. We have still got the right to fish in the English bay-." So 

 we said: " We will not let you keep on saying that We must have 

 it agreed." That is what Mr. Bagot says: " We must have it agreed 

 that you give up your claim that you expressly abandon it v And 

 that was why the renunciation clause came in, in 1818, although in 

 1814 the Americans do not only refuse it, but they would not have it 

 in the most insidious or inferential form ; they would not have it at 

 all. Now they come to the point where they had to have it. Of 

 course the negotiators tried to make the best of it Sometimes when 



