2108 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



tion over fishery, and without any consideration or study or discus- 

 sion of the subject of the scope or the power and authority under 

 the treaty of 1818. One of those opinions was expressed by Mr. 

 Cardwell in 1866; another expressed by the British Minister and 

 Lord Clarendon in 1855. They were both completely disposed of 

 when the Governments themselves, through their authorised repre- 

 sentatives, their foreign offices, took up and considered and dealt 

 formally and authoritatively with the question of the rights and 

 powers created by the treaty of 1818, both in the correspondence and 

 action regarding the Newfoundland legislation of 1873 and 1874, 

 and in the Evarts-Salisbury correspondence of 1878, 1879, and 



1880. 



1275 So it rests, that for sixty-two years after this treaty of 1818 

 was made, there was no position taken by the Government of 

 Great Britain that involved the assertion of a right to alter, or 

 modify, or limit, or restrain the discretion of the United States in 

 determining the time and manner in which the liberty to fish should 

 be exercised. 



On the contrary, time after time the Government of Great Britain 

 by its authorised representatives, assented to and asserted and based 

 its argument and position upon the non-existence of any such right 

 on the part of Great Britain, and the existence of a discretion on the 

 part of the United States; and, it rests, that for thirty -seven years 

 after the treaty was made no British official, however casually, ever 

 expressed a doubt or question regarding the right of the United 

 States to exercise its own discretion in determining the implements 

 it should use in taking fish on the treaty coast, and the times when 

 it should take the fish. 



Now, I want to group together four expressions upon this subject 

 which have occurred in the transactions which I have been detailing, 

 but which have necessarily been presented at widely separated 

 points in my argument. 



First, Lord Bathurst in the paper which formed the basis of the 

 negotiation in 1815 described the American right under the treaty of 

 1783 as the claim of an independent State to occupy and use at its 

 discretion any portion of the territory of another. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK : Just for convenience, will you give the 

 page? 



SENATOR ROOT: Page 274 of the American Appendix. And, I will 

 observe there, that while it is true, as Chief Justice Fitzpatrick 

 observed yesterday, that Lord Bathurst is speaking with reference to 

 the prior letter to Mr. Adams, which he is answering, it is not Mr. 

 Adams's characterising of the right which is expressed here, it is 

 Lord Bathurst 's characterising of the right Mr. Adams had claimed 

 that the rights of the United States under the treaty of 1783 which 



