NORTH ATLANTIC FISHERIES DISPUTE 3 



She knows of no exception to the rule that all treaties are put an end to 



by a subsequent war between the same parties The treaty of 



1783, like many others, contained provisions of different characters — 

 some in their own nature irrevocable, and others of a temporary nature. 

 .... The nature of the liberty to fish within British limits, or to use 

 British territory, is essentially different from the right of independence, 

 in all that may reasonably be supposed to regard its intended duration. 



In the third article [of the treaties of 1782 and 1783] Great Britain 



acknowledges the right of the United States to take fish on the banks of 

 Newfoundland and other places, from which Great Britain has no right 

 to exclude an independent nation. But they are to have the 'liberty' 

 to cure and dry them in certain unsettled places within His Majesty's 

 territory. If these liberties, thus granted, were to be as perpetual and 

 independent as the rights previously recognized, it is difiScult to conceive 

 that the plenipotentiaries of the United States would have admitted a 

 variation of language so adapted to produce a different impression ; and, 

 above all, that they should have admitted so strange a restriction of a 

 perpetual and indefeasible right as that with which the article concludes, 

 which leaves a right so practical and so beneficial as this is admitted to 

 be, dependent on the will of British subjects, in their character of inhab-- 

 itants, proprietors or possessors of the soil, to prohibit its exercises alto- 

 gether. It is surely obvious that the word 'right' is, throughout the 

 treaty, used as applicable to what the United States were to enjoy, in 

 virtue of a recognized independence; and the word 'liberty' to what 

 they were to enjoy, as concessions strictly dependent on the treaty itself.' 



Between 1815 and 1818 many American fishing vessels 

 Convention found fishing in British waters were seized and much ill- 

 of 1818 feeling was engendered. On Oct. 20, 1818, a Convention 



was signed at London, the first article of which read as follows : 



ARTICLE I 



"Whereas differences have arisen respecting the liberty claimed by 

 the United States for the inhabitants thereof, to take, dry and cure fish 

 on certain coasts, bays, harbours and creeks of His Britannic Majesty's 

 domiinons in America, it is agreed between the high contracting parties 

 that the said inhabitants of the United States shall have forever, in com- 

 mon with the subjects of His Britannic Majesty, the liberty to take fish 

 of every kind on that part of the southern coast of Newfoundland which 

 extends from Cape Ray to the Rameau Islands, on the western and nor- 

 thern coast of Newfoundland from the said Cape Ray to the Quirpon 

 Islands, on the shores of the Magdalen Islands, and also on the coasts, 

 bays, harbours and creeks from Moiuit Joly on the southern coast of 



