QUESTION ONE. 43 



Britain possessed the jus disponendi and to which the United States 

 proposed to acquire a right in common. That Great Britain pro- 

 posed to grant the fishery or the United States to accept it, in any 

 less dimensions than Great Britain had power to convey it, or than 

 by the natural description it could and did convey it, is a proposition 

 so preposterous that it is hardly necessary to refer to the gram- 

 matical or colloquial sense of the words or to their technical meaning 

 to refute it; still, it is gratifying, when those sources of learning are 

 explored, to find that they sustain so fully the contention of the United 

 States. In the view of the United States there is as much ground for 

 the contention that the Americans may limit the British right as that 

 the British may limit the American right. The words in common 

 mean equality of right, but there would be no equality if one party 

 could exercise the right in full measure or to a limited extent only 

 at its pleasure, while the other party had no such full liberty, but 

 must conform its exercise of the right to that prescribed for itself 

 by the other party. 



While the United States does not admit that the words in common 

 are at all ambiguous, yet if they be so considered, a resort to the 

 process of interpretation and construction will, it is confidently 

 believed, confirm the sense of their meaning contended for by the 

 United States. 



THE BBITISH CONSTRUCTION WOULD LEAD TO INADMISSIBLE 



RESULTS. 



The principle that the words in common imply that American 

 fishermen are to be governed in the exercise of the right of fishery, by 

 limitations placed by Great Britain on British fishermen would carry 

 the power of limitation to a point where the right would be held 

 at the mere will and pleasure of Great Britain. If the words 

 imply a power to impose limitations, then the limitations need not be 

 imposed in aid of the preservation of the fisheries or of the fair exer- 

 cise of the fisheries by both nations, but they may be imposed in aid 

 of any other policy of Great Britain, local or national. 



Reference will be made in another connection to the temptation, to 

 which the local authorities are subjected, to make regulations osten- 

 sibly in the interest of the preservation of the fisheries, which are 

 one-sided and disadvantageous to their rivals, but may be defended 



92909 S. Doc. 870. 61-3, vol 8 4 



