2190 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



harbors shall be under such restrictions as may be necessary to pre- 

 vent their taking, drying, or curing fish therein." 



That is not a renunciation clause. That is a grant. That is a 

 grant from Great Britain. And the difference between the two is 

 that the clause proposed by the Americans renounced the right of 

 taking and drying and curing of fish, and, by necessary implication, 

 asserted that the Americans had the right that they were renouncing ; 

 while the clause proposed by the British granted a right for specific 

 purposes, and, by necessary implication, asserted that the British had 

 the right that they were granting. The two are world-wide apart. 

 One is a renunciation and the other is not. Of course the Americans 

 were abandoning their claim of right to all the coasts, that they did 

 not expressly get granted to them in this article. They were aban- 

 doning it They could no longer have it when the settlement had 

 been made upon the basis of their having a right to fish only on such 

 and such coasts. But the American renunciation was an abandon- 

 ment by their renouncing what they had, what they still asserted was 

 theirs, while the British proposal was that the abandonment should 

 be accomplished by being silent, assuming that they had nothing 

 except what the British chose to grant in making an express grant 

 for that purpose. 



There is only one other subject to which I feel bound to refer, and 

 that is the Webster circular, or the Webster pronunciamento or proc- 

 lamation. That paper appears in the British Appendix, p. 152, and 

 it is the contention of Great Britain that that paper was a surrender 

 by the United States, or an admission by the United States, that the 

 treaty did give to the renunciation clause the effect of cover- 

 1324 ing these great bays. It is an extraordinary statement ex- 

 traordinary in every feature ; and it is especially extraordinary 

 in the fact that it says, at the same time, that 



" It would appear that, by a strict and rigid construction of this 

 article, fishing vessels of the United States are precluded from enter- 

 ing into the bays or harbors of the British provinces." 



and that it was an oversight in the negotiators of the treaty to make 

 so large a concession to England, and that Mr. Webster does not 

 agree with the construction put upon the treaty which makes it a 

 concession. A most amazing paper, by the Secretary of State of the 

 United States, charged with the conduct of her foreign affairs. The 

 lines were drawn, and had for years been drawn, between the two coun- 

 tries in direct opposition upon the construction of this treaty ; and he 

 issues this public proclamation, which he publishes in a newspaper. It 

 is quite inexplicable upon any ordinary grounds, in any ordinary way. 

 Mr. Everett says, in a letter which appears at p. 543 of the Ameri- 

 can Appendix, that Lord Malmesbury ascribed the extraordinary 

 nature of the paper to two causes : one " the influences which period- 



