1948 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



If we turn to the British Counter-Case Appendix, at p. 71 we find 

 Mr. Oswald, the chief negotiator of the treaty of 1783, and the pre- 

 liminary treaty of 1782, writing to Mr. Townshend, his chief in the 

 Foreign Office of Great Britain, under date of the 2nd October, 1783, 

 adding a postscript: 



" Drying fish in Newfoundland, I find is to be claimed as a privi- 

 lege in common, we being allowed the same on their shores." 



And on p. 78 there is a note in a letter from Mr. Jay to Mr. Livings- 

 ton. Mr. Jay, you will remember, was one of the negotiators on the 

 American side in the Treaty of Peace of 1783, and he writes home 

 to Washington, under date of the 24th October, 1782, speaking of a 

 conversation with M. Rayneval, the French negotiator: 



"He inquired" (that is, M. Rayneval) "what we demanded as 

 to the fisheries. We answered that we insisted on enjoying a right in 

 common to them with Great Britain." 



That was Mr. Jay's conception of what was demanded and what 

 was received by the Americans in the treaty of 1783, corresponding 

 precisely to Mr. Adams' statement of it in his letter in 1816 to Lord 

 Bathurst. 



In the same British Counter-Case Appendix at p. 110 there is a 

 letter dated the 4th December, 1782, from Count de Vergennes to 

 M. de Rayneval. At the beginning of the very last line on p. 110, 

 and running on to the top of p. Ill, it says: 



" The perusals of the preliminaries of the Americans will make 

 you feel how important it is that their concessions should be free from 

 ambiguity in respect to the exclusive exercise of our rights of fish- 

 ing." 



The French right of fishing. He proceeds: 



" The Americans acquiring the right to fish in common with the 

 English fishermen, they should have no occasion or pretext for 

 troubling us." 



Near the very beginning of the British Argument, p. 6, Great 

 Britain cites a paper which was interposed by Mr. Rush in the nego- 

 tiations with Great Britain which followed the French interference 

 with American rights on the coast in 1820, 1821, and 1822, in which 

 Mr. Rush refers to the French right of fishing on the coast as being 

 a right in common, and that view was the view always taken by the 

 British regarding the French rights of fishing on that coast, always 

 denied by the French, always asserted by the British. 



JUDGE GRAY : Mr. Root, in order that I may fully understand your 

 position, your contention is that the use of the words " in common " 

 in the citations that you have just made from M. Ra ym-val and Comte 

 de Vergennes. was such as to contradistinguish it, in those instances, 

 to exclusiveness. 



SENATOR ROOT: Precisely, Sir. 



