12 ARGUMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



quences. He has represented it as, on the part of the minority, a 

 PRETEXT to preserve the -fishing privilege, and to get rid of a proposi- 

 tion confirmative of the British right to the navigation of the Missis- 

 sippi. He says he does not recollect that any member of the mission, 

 except myseli, appeared to be a very zealous believer in that doctrine. 

 I thank Mr. Kussell for that concession. If there was moral virtue or 

 has been successful result in the assertion of that principle to preserve 

 the fishing liberties, I ask no more than an equal share in the esteem 

 of my country, for having asserted it, with those of my colleagues who 

 are yet willing to bear the imputation, not as a pretext, but with sin- 

 cerity of heart, and as very zealous believers in it. But were every 

 other living member of the mission to say, and were the spirit of 

 Bayard from the tomb to join with them and declare, that they 

 assumed this principle only in the spirit of compromise, and as a 

 pretext, but that they considered it only as the dream of a visionary, 

 I would answer the dream of the visionary was an honest dream. 

 He believed what he affirmed and subscribed. And, I might con- 

 fidently add, it has saved your fisheries. Nor should I need other 

 proof, than the negotiations with Great Britain since the peace, and 

 the convention of 1818." (British Counter-Case, App., p. 163.) 



If Mr. Adams' conception met with little support from his col- 

 leagues, they are by no means the only Americans who have been un- 

 able to accept it. Such distinguished Americans as Mr. Daniel 

 Webster, in 1852, (then United States Secretary of State), and 

 Professor Pomeroy, in 1871, have been unable to agree with the 



Adams theory. 

 14 Mr. Webster, referring to the liberty to fish conferred on the 



inhabitants of the United States, states : 



" It is admitted that this is a liberty held by the inhabitants of the 

 United States by concession and not exempted from abrogation by 

 war." (United States Case, App., p. 532.) 



Professor Pomeroy, in an article in the "American Law Review," 

 (1871, vol. v. p. 389), on the North-Eastern Fisheries, speaks of the 

 partition theory in the following terms: 



" The analogy suggested between the treaty of 1783 and a partition 

 among co-owners of their lands and the rights issuing therefrom pre- 

 viously held in common, is more fanciful than sound. That treaty 

 created and conferred a liberty, and did not merely recognize a 

 subsisting right, to fish in the Canadian territorial waters. This must 

 be conceded at the outset, and our further discussion will be based 

 upon the concession." 



DISCUSSION OF UNITED STATES ARGUMENT ON PARTITION. 



It will be found that the argument now presented on this point by 

 the United States varies not inconsiderably from that relied on by 

 Mr. Adams in 1814, and the differences illustrate the great difficulty 

 of formulating the proposition in any tangible way. Without dwell- 

 ing upon these differences in detail it is now proposed to show that 



