QUESTION ONE. 13 



the position taken up by the United States in their Case and Counter- 

 Case is quite untenable. 



In the Case of the United States the argument is put as follows: 



"The United States and Great Britain thus met as independent 

 nations negotiating for the purpose of concluding a treaty of peace 

 dividing between them the British Empire in North America; and 

 standing on this basis the Commissioners on the part of the United 

 States asserted and insisted throughout the negotiations that the 

 British interests in the North Atlantic coast fisheries were subject to 

 such division and that the pre-existing right of the Colonies therein 

 must be recognized and continued by the treaty. 



" The people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and of the other 

 Colonies had continuously and freely resorted to these fisheries and 

 exercised unrestricted fishing rights and liberties there until the time 

 of the Revolution, and had borne almost unaided the burden of main- 

 taining and defending their own and British interests in these fish- 

 eries against the aggressions of the French during the wars between 

 Great Britain and France. In view of such continuous usage and 

 enjoyment and by virtue of the services rendered by them in defence 

 of these fisheries, the American Colonies asserted and insisted 

 15 that they had in them at least the equal rights of joint owners 

 with Great Britain and the other British Colonies." (United 

 States Case, p. 8.) 



The argument, as thus formulated, involves the following propo- 

 sitions : 



I. That the treaty of 1783 was a partition of joint property be- 

 tween co-owners. 



II. That the effect of this partition was to exempt American fish- 

 ermen from obligation to conform to such reasonable regulations for 

 the conduct and preservation of the fisheries as then existed, or as the 

 legislatures, within whose jurisdiction the fisheries lay, might after- 

 wards properly deem to be necessary. 



III. That the fishing liberties of the treaty of 1783 continued not- 

 withstanding the war of 1812-14. 



IV. That the new treaty of 1818 was not a grant of fishing liber- 

 ties from Great Britain to the United States, but an acknowledgment 

 by Great Britain that they had always existed. 



It will be convenient to discuss these points separately. 



JOINT OWNERSHIP. 



I. It is asserted that the United States and Great Britain when 

 they met in the negotiations of 1782 possessed "the equal rights of 

 joint owners" in the British coast-fisheries and in British shores; 

 and that such fisheries and shores were subject to division between 

 them. 



92909 S. Doc. 870, 61-3, vol 8 19 



