1724 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



VIII. 



FIS\L ARGUMENT OF MR. DOUTRE OX BEHALF OF HER BRITANNIC 



MAJESTY. 



FRIDAY, November 16, 1877. 



The Conference met. 



Mr. DOUTRE addressed the Commission as follows: 



With the permission of your excellency and your honors, I will lay 

 before this tribunal, in support of Her Majesty's claim, some observa- 

 tions, which I will make as brief as the nature of the case admits; and 

 in order that these remarks may be intelligible, without reference to 

 many voluminous documents, 1 solicit your indulgence while going once 

 more over grounds familiar to the Commission. 



As soon as the war, resulting: in the independence of the confederated 

 colonies, came to an end, the United States sought for a recognition of 

 their new existence from Great Britain, and the Treaty of Paris of 1783 

 was agreed to. As an incident to the main object of that treaty, Art. 

 3 states: "The people of the United States shall continue to enjoy un- 

 molested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and on 

 all other banks of Newfoundland ; also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and 

 at all other places in the sea, where the inhabitants of both countries 

 used at any time heretofore to fish ; and also the inhabitants of the 

 United States shall have liberty to take fish of every kind on such part 

 of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use (but not to 

 dry or cure the same on that island), and also on the coast, bays, and 

 creeks of all other of His Britannic Majesty's dominions in America ; 

 and the American fishermen shall have the liberty to dry and cure fish in 

 any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen 

 Islands, and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but 

 so soon as the same, or either of them, shall be settled, it shall not be 

 lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement without 

 a previous agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors, 

 or possessors of the ground." 



We have heard from counsel representing the United States very ex- 

 traordinary assumptions, both historical and political, concerning the 

 circumstances under which this treaty was adopted. At the distance of 

 nearly a century, fancy can suggest much to literary or romantic speak- 

 ers especially when it concerns a subject on which they are not called 

 upon to give any evidence on which they can build an "interesting rec- 

 ord of their own opinions, before this Commission. We had to deal 

 with a very complex matter of business one which probably has never 

 engaged th<> research of a judicial tribunal and we thought this was 

 enough for the efforts of humble men of business, such as we claim to 

 be. Our friends on the American side treated us with a poetical account 



the capture of the Golden Fleece at Louisburg, by Massachusetts 

 heroes, in order to show how their statesmen of a previous generation 

 had misconceived the nature of their primitive, conquered, and indis- 



utable right to our fisheries, without indemnity in any shape. British 



Storians, statesmen, or orators would probably have little weight with 



: friends in their estimate of treaty negotiations. With the hope of 

 obtaining a hearing from our opponents, let us speak through the mouth 

 of American diplomatists or statesmen. 



It will strike every one that in the concessions contained in our Treaty 



Great Britain did not extend to American fishermen all the 



rights belonging to her own subjects in these fisheries a fact sufficient 



