2142 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



This letter shows that, having brought sharply before it the 

 assertion of Nova Scotia, that the treaty covered by its renunciation 

 clause the great bodies of water geographically known as bays, and 

 being faced with the demand of the United States for reparation 

 for the acts which the United States deemed to be unwarranted and 

 injurious, of seizing the "Argus " and the " Washington," the British 

 Government re-examined the subject; plainly they then discovered. 

 or had already discovered, the error in the former opinion of tin- 

 law officers of the Crown, who had based an expression of opinion 

 that the renunciation clause of the treaty did cover these " bays " 

 upon the supposed use of the word '* headlands " in the treaty. 

 Plainly the Government of Great Britain had discovered that that 

 opinion was built on sand, and the opinion had fallen in the estima- 

 tion of the Foreign Office; and we have here a statement that the 

 Foreign Office had prepared and communicated to the Colonial Office. 

 at the head of which Lord Stanley was, an examination and exposi- 

 tion of the subject. He says: 



" I transmit to your Lordship herewith a copy of a letter which I 

 have received from the Foreign Office on the subject/' 



1295 That is to say. having the matter sharply presented by 



the demand for reparation for the seizure of the " Washing- 

 ton " and the "Argus," the Foreign Office took the subject up in 

 earnest, examined it, found that the opinion of the Law Officers of 

 the Crown, upon which Nova Scotia had been proceeding, was not 

 worth the paper it was written on, because it was based upon an 

 erroneous assumption as to the terms of the treaty, came to the 

 conclusion that the construction which is now contended for by 

 the United States was the correct construction of the treaty, com- 

 municated that fact, with the reasons, to the Colonial Office, and 

 the Colonial Office advised the Governor of Nova Scotia in this letter 

 that the Government of Great Britain had determined to regard as 

 bays, in the sense of the treaty, only those inlets of the sea which 

 measure from headland to headland, at their entrance, double the 

 distance of 3 miles. 



The Government of Great Britain was driven back from giving 

 effect to that conclusion by the protest that came from Nova Scotia, 

 based upon the interests of the colony. 



Nevertheless, we have of record that deliberate, reasoned, matured 

 decision of the Government of Great Britain as to the meaning of 

 the renunciation clause in this treaty. 



Motives of policy affecting their colony prevented them from 

 giving effect to their decision, but the decision remain- as authority 

 for us in our consideration of the question. 



There are two or three other communications from Great Britain 

 which serve to mark the outlines of the subject and define the ques- 



