60 THE ABGUMENT OP THE UNITED STATES. 



treaty of 1818 in turn simply recognized and continued preexisting 

 rights. 



As a statement of the contention of the United States this is not 

 strictly accurate. The position taken by the United States was that 

 the American Colonies, by reason of their exertions to acquire, main- 

 tain, and develop the North Atlantic fisheries, and of the relation of 

 the fisheries to them geographically and economically, were as much 

 entitled to those fisheries upon their separation from Great Britain, 

 as the people inhabiting the territories which remained under the 

 British Crown, and that the treaty of 1783, recognizing the division 

 of the British Empire as the result of the success of the American 

 Eevolution, apportioned to each of the divided parts, to be thereafter 

 held by each of them as national possessions, an equal right in those 

 fisheries. 



This was very far from a contention that citizens of the United 

 States were merely enjoying the fishery rights which they had for- 

 merly enjoyed as subjects of the British Crown, and that their pres- 

 ent rights were only a continuation of their former rights. While 

 the right is in essence the same right and grows out of the former 

 right, it was formerly enjoyed by the Americans as British subjects, 

 but it is now enjoyed by them as American citizens. They enjoyed 

 it before by permission of the Crown which owned all the fisheries ; 

 they enjoy it now as a national right. 



The independence of the United States introduced a factor which 

 resolved the constituent elements of the right on a new basis and 

 metamorphosed what had been municipal rights into international 

 rights. Under the changed condition the right had become one which 

 subjected a part of the territory of Great Britain to the purpose and 

 interest of the United States. In other words, it had become an in- 

 ternational servitude limiting the former unlimited power of Great 

 Britain. An appeal, therefore, to the former municipal status to 

 establish the measure of the present international right must be 

 ineffectual for the right being now international is no longer bur- 

 dened with the municipal incidents which formerly attached to the 

 pre-existing right. 



The British Case remarks of the contention in question that " this 

 view has been repudiated by Great Britain," and as the United States, 

 for the purposes of this case, has consented to have its rights measured 

 and adjudicated by the terms of the treaty of 1818, it does not require 

 further consideration. 



