46 THE ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



mon with the subjects of His Britannic Majesty, the liberty to take 

 fish," etc. 



It will be seen that the essential words of the American draft were 

 carried into the treaty except those implying that the right granted 

 was in continuance of the former right. The American negotiators 

 could afford to dispense with them since they had secured the word 

 forever and had reinforced it with the memorandum to which the 

 British plenipotentiaries had made no rejoinder. 



The words "in common with the subjects of His Britannic Maj- 

 esty" not in either of the draft projects, appear for the first time in 

 the completed article in connection with the words of tenure. 



The American negotiators had declared that whatever extent of 

 fishing ground might be secured to American fishermen, they were 

 not prepared to accept it on a tenure or on conditions different from 

 those on which the whole had theretofore been held, and to evidence 

 that the right taken was on the same tenure and conditions as the 

 prior right, they proposed and insisted on inserting in the treaty, 

 the renunciatory clause therein found, with the twofold view of 

 preventing any implication that the fishery secured was a new grant 

 and of placing the permanence of the rights secured and of those 

 renounced on the same footing, and also of expressly stating that the 

 renunciation extended only to the distance of three miles from the 

 coast. 



This assertion that the new right must be on the same tenure and 

 conditions as the old one, followed the proposal of the British pleni- 

 potentiaries, at the fifth conference before noted, of a form of stipula- 

 tion as to the fisheries, from which the words in common were 

 absent, and in which the liberty of fishing was carried by the words, 

 " it is agreed that the inhabitants of the United States shall, have the 

 liberty to take fish of every kind," etc. The completed article, 

 brought in by the British plenipotentiaries at the seventh con- 

 ference and accepted by the United States, included the words 

 in common, etc. They were accepted because they were precisely 

 suited, when used in connection with words of perpetuity, to secure 

 under the principles and practice of the law common to both coun- 

 tries, that which the American negotiators had declared it was indis- 

 pensable they should have, namely, a renewal of fishing rights on a 



U. S. Case, 59-66; Appendix, 307. 



