ARGUMENT OF ELIHU ROOT. 2173 



time league from the coasts. My learned friends on the other side, 

 reading this letter and giving their own meaning to the word " bays," 

 say that it shows the intention of Great Britain to exclude from 

 bays. But here we have a certain and positive proof of the meaning 

 which the negotiators of the treaty of 1818 and which the Government 

 of Great Britain ascribe to the word " bays " when used in the phrase 

 " bays, harbours, rivers, creeks, and inlets." To a demonstration the 

 bays from which they propose to exclude the fishermen of the United 

 States were bays within the maritime league of the coast. 



Can anything be clearer than that? On the one hand, the area of 

 exclusion, of prevention, of prohibition, covering bays, rivers, har- 

 bours, creeks, and inlets 'within the jurisdiction of the maritime 

 league from the coasts ; on the other hand, the area of freedom with- 

 out the jurisdiction of the maritime league from the coast. 



THE PRESIDENT: Was not the expression "places without the ju- 

 risdiction of the maritime league " used in the correspondence as des- 

 ignating the places corresponding with the first branch of article 3 

 of the treaty of 1783? The controversy was whether the whole of 

 article 3 survived the war, or only the first part of it. The British 

 contention was that the second branch of article 3 had been super- 

 seded by the war, and was not the language of this correspondence 

 based upon the contradistinction between the places designated in 

 the first and second branches of article 3? 



SENATOR ROOT : Doubtless, and this draws an accurate and authori- 

 tative line between the two. Those areas which, in this year 1815, 

 the British Government regarded as covered by the first branch, are 

 those outside of the marine league from the coasts. That is the very 

 thing that they are defining. They are drawing a line between the 

 first branch and the second branch of the treaty of 1783 and they are 

 declaring that everything without the jurisdiction of the maritime 

 league from the coasts is to be admitted to continue to the United 

 States, under the first branch of the treaty of 1783, and that only 

 such areas of water as are within the jurisdiction of the marine 

 league from the coasts, are to be treated as being lost by the United 

 States, because under the second branch of the treaty of 1783. 



Now, I might call attention, for a more complete understanding of 

 this letter, to the letters which I read at the opening of my argument 

 this morning. I would refer first to the letter of the Earl of Kim- 

 b'Hey to Lord Lisgar, p. 636 of the American Case Appendix, in 

 which the Earl of Kimberley says: 



"As at present advised, Her Majesty's Government are of opinion 

 that the right of Canada to exclude Americans from fishing in the 

 waters within the Kimits of three marine miles of the coast, is beyond 

 dispute, and can only be ceded for an adequate consideration." 



