78 NOETH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES AEBITRATION. 



course of fish," and which makes specific provision for fishing in 

 the harbour of St. John, as to the manner and time of fishing, cannot 

 be read as being limited to fishing from the shore. The Act for regu- 

 lating the fishing on the coast of Northumberland (1799) contains 

 very elaborate dispositions concerning the fisheries in the Bay of Mira- 

 michi, Avhich were contuuied in 1823, 1829 and 1834. The statutes 

 of Lower Canada, 1788 and 1807, forbid the throwing overboard of 

 offal. The fact that these Acts extend the prohibition over a greater 

 distance than the first marine league from the shore may make them 

 non-operative against foreigners without the territorial limits of 

 Great Britain, but is certainly no reason to deny their obligatory 

 character for foreigners within these limits; 



(A.) Because the fact that Great Britain rarely exercised the right 

 of regulation in the period immediately succeeding 1818 is to be ex- 

 plained by various circumstances, and is not evidence of the non- 

 existence of the right ; 

 112 (i.) Because the words "in common with British subjects" 



tend to confirm the opinion that the inhabitants of the United 

 States were admitted to a regulated fishery ; 



(j.) Because the statute of Great Britain, 1819, which gives legis- 

 lative sanction to the treaty of 1S18, provides for the making of 

 " regulations with relation to the taking, drying and curing of fish 

 by inhabitants of the United States ' in common.' " 



For the purpose of such proof it is further contended by the United 

 States, in this latter connection : 



4. That the words " in common with British subjects " used in the 

 treaty should not be held as importing a common subjection to regu- 

 lation, but as intending to negative a possible pretension on the part 

 of the inhabitants of the United States to liberties of fishery exclusive 

 of the right of British subjects to fish. 



The Tribunal is unable to agree with this contention: 

 (a.) Because such an interpretation is inconsistent with the his- 

 torical basis of the American fishing liberty. The ground on which 

 Mr. Adams founded the American right in 1782 was that the people 

 then constituting the United States had always, when still under 

 British rule, a part in these fisheries and that they must continue to 

 enjoy their past right in the future. He proposed " that the subjects 

 of His Britannic Majesty and the people of the United States shall 

 continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish .... where the 

 inhabitants of both countries used, at any time heretofore, to fish." 

 The theory of the partition of the fisheries which, by the American 

 negotiators, had been advanced with so much force, negatives the 

 assumption that the United States could ever pretend to an exclusive 

 right to fish on the British shores ; and to insert a special disposition 

 to that end would have been wholly superfluous; 



