496 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



article (defining the boundaries of the United States), stood 

 inviolate and unaffected by the war that had just been con- 

 cluded between the parties. In defending his position he 

 afterward wrote : 



In case of a cession of territory, when the possession of it has 

 been delivered, the article of the treaty is no longer a compact 

 between the parties, nor can a subsequent war between them 

 operate in any manner upon it. So of all articles, the purport of 

 which is the acknowledgment by one party of a preexisting right 

 belonging to another. The engagement of the acknowledging 

 party is consummated by the ratification of the treaty. It is no 

 longer an executory contract, but a perfect right united with a 

 vested possession, is thenceforth in one party, and the acknowl- 

 edgment of the other is in its own nature irrevocable. As a bar- 

 gain the article is extinct ; but the right of the party in whose 

 favor it was made is complete, and eannot be affected by a sub- 

 sequent war. A grant of a facultative right or incorporeal 

 hereditament, and specifically of a right of fishery, from one 

 sovereign to another, is an article of the same description. It 

 is analogous to a cession of territory, and is in fact a partial aud 

 qualified cession. The right is consummated by the ratification 

 of the treaty. The possession is vested by the exercise of the 

 faculty. 



So that whether the third article of the treaty of 1783 be con- 

 sidered as an acknowledgment of preexisting liberties or as a 

 grant of them, to be exercised within British jurisdiction, it was 

 in its nature permanent and irrevocable. 



Only on the assumption that the treaty article in question 

 created no new privileges but merely recognized an existing 

 one, can Mr. Adams' somewhat ingenious argument be 

 accepted as sound. However, as it is universally agreed 

 that a nation has full jurisdiction over its marginal waters, 

 Mr. A-dams' contention mast be regarded as wholly unten- 

 able. With a mind uninfluenced or clouded by considera- 

 tions of the national needs and popular clamors of a period, 

 one may often look back over the distance of years and 

 obtain a clearer view of political conditions and of interna- 

 tional questions than was possible to the men who were 

 called upon to grapple with them. The very nearness to 

 difficulties occasionally distorts the vision of great men and 



