118 ARGUMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



ment. The passage in that Minority Report is as follows (British 

 Case, App., p. 479) : 



" In view of these declarations of our plenipotentiaries, who nego- 

 tiated the treaty of 1818, no censure can be due to Daniel Webster 

 for having expressed the opinion, in what is termed his ' proclama- 

 tion ' to our fishermen, that ' it would appear that, by a strict and 

 rigid construction of this article ' (of the treaty of 1818), ' the fishing 

 vessels of the United States are precluded from entering into the 

 bays,' etc., and that ' it was undoubtedly an oversight in the conven- 

 tion of 1818 to make so large a concession to England, since the 

 United States had usually considered that these vast inlets or recesses 

 of the ocean ought to be open to American fishermen, as free as the 

 sea itself, to within three miles of the shore." 



CONCLUSION. 



For these reasons Great Britain contends, in the words of the 

 British Case, that the treaty applies to all bays on the coasts of 

 British North America, and that the three marine miles specified in 

 article 1 must be measured, in the case of unindented coasts, from the 

 shore line at low tide ; and, in the case of all bays, creeks, or harbours. 

 from a line drawn across the mouths of such bays, creeks, or harbours. 



