478 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



of ' any territorial changes, in whioh respect it made no 

 difference whether Canada and Newfoundland should remain 

 under the sovereignty of England or pass to the United 

 States at the conclusion of hostilities. In the light of a 

 better understanding of the public law on this subject, it 

 now seems clear that the fishery rights must attach to and 

 adhere to the ownership of and sovereignty over the terri- 

 tories in whose waters the fish are found. Americans should 

 have been left free to fish on the Banks, for they lie wholly 

 without the limits of territorial marine jurisdiction, and are 

 therefore free to the world, but the right to catch fish in 

 Canadian waters, that is, within the three-mile limit of ordi- 

 dary marine jurisdiction, was wholly a different matter. In the 

 one case (the Bank fishery) no fears should have been enter- 

 tained at any time touching the question of American rights. 

 The public law settles this matter, and gives all nations the 

 right to fish outside territorial waters. In the other case, 

 a continuance of inshore fishing by Americans in Canadian 

 territorial waters, as enjoyed by them while British colonists, 

 could not have been allowable as an international right, nor 

 could such right have been legally based on the relations of 

 the parties existing prior to the peace of 1783. The appre- 

 hensions of the statesmen of the period lest Great Britain 

 should attempt in a spirit of retaliation to perpetuate the 

 interdictions of Lord North's Bill and thus seek, perhaps by 

 force of arms, to cut off Americans from all participation in 

 the northern fisheries, were possibly well founded. It was 

 determined, at all events, to make the question of the fisheries 

 a prominent subject of the treaty of peace with England. 

 The fishery interests of the country were supposed to be so 

 intimately associated with its commercial prosperity that no 

 conditions interfering with their full development could be 

 tolerated ; indeed, it was urged in many quarters that their 

 importance warranted a continuance of the war, if need be, 

 to preserve them inviolate. 



The firm purpose of Congress to insist upon a full recogni- 

 tion of these fishing rights as a sine qua non of commercial 

 relations with England was supported by all its members, 



