QUESTION ONE. 21 



of rights which had always existed. And if so, the whole argument 

 falls to the ground. 



It is impossible, moreover, to contend that the treaty of 1818 was 

 an acknowledgment of any prior rights of the United States; unless, 

 indeed, the undisputed facts are altogether ignored. The claim for 

 some such acknowledgment had been expressly made by the United 

 States, and expressly refused by Great Britain. It is impossible 

 to hold one party to a contract bound by a construction which it had 

 expressly repudiated before entering into that contract. On this 



point the following facts are material: 



24 Both at the outset, and immediately before the close of the 



negotiations at Ghent in 1814, the British Commissioners took 

 the position which Great Britain ever afterwards maintained, giving 

 formal notice to the United States Commissioners 



" that the British Government did not intend to grant to the United 

 States gratuitously the privileges formerly granted by treaty to them 

 of fishing within the limits of the British sovereignty, and of using 

 the shores of the British territories for purposes connected with the 

 fisheries." (United States Case, App., 242.) 



The United States Commissioners declined to admit that the treaty 

 privileges of 1783 had been terminated by the war, and peace was 

 concluded without any agreement on the question. 



In 1815, Mr. John Quincy Adams renewed the negotiations with 

 Lord Bathurst in London. In a long letter, Mr. Adams, while he 

 argued for the continued existence of the liberties of the 1783 treaty, 

 also put forward the following reasons for concession : 



" In the interview with which your Lordship recently favoured me, 

 I suggested several other considerations, with the hope of convincing 

 your Lordship that, independent of the question of rigorous right, 

 it would conduce to the substantial interests of Great Britain herself, 

 as well as to the observance of those principles of benevolence and 

 humanity which it is the highest glory of a great and powerful nation 

 to respect, to leave to the American fishermen the participation of 

 those benefits which the bounty of nature has thus spread before 

 them ; which are so necessary to their comfort and subsistence ; which 

 they have constantly enjoyed hitherto ; and which, far from operating 

 as an injury to Great Britain, had the ultimate result of pouring 

 into her lap a great portion 01 the profits of their hardy and labo- 

 rious industry ; that these fisheries afforded the means of subsistence 

 to a numerous class of people in the United States, whose habit of 

 life had been fashioned to no other occupation, and whose fortunes 

 had allotted them no other possession ; that to another, and. perhaps, 

 equally numerous class of our citizens, they afforded the means of 

 remittance and payment for the productions of British industry and 

 ingenuity, imported from the manufactures of this United Kingdom ; 

 that, by the common and received usages among civilised nations, 

 fishermen were among those classes of human society whose occupa- 

 tions, contributing to the general benefit and welfare of the species, 



