331 BALCH— THE AMERICAN-BRITISH [April 22, 



Commenting on this decision Wharton says :^° 



In the case here cited there ought to have been no conviction, even under 

 the statute, unless it could have been shown that the purchase was a prepa- 

 ration to fish within the forbidden belt, and that this was put in process of 

 execution. Sir W. Young's dictum on this point, therefore, cannot be sus- 

 tained as a matter of municipal law. As a ruling of international law it is of 

 no authority, since preparing to fish without fishing is in any view not a 

 contravention of the treaty of 1818. But Sir W. Young's ruling, on the merits, 

 coincides with that of Judge Hazen, since he concedes that merely buying 

 fish within the three miles is not a violation of the treaty. 



In order to ehminate the friction caused by such seizures of 

 American vessels in the British fishing grounds, the American- Brit- 

 ish Joint High Commission, which met in Washington in February, 

 1 87 1, to negotiate a comprehensive treaty whereby " the Alabama 

 Claims," the chief cause of difference between the two countries, 

 should be submitted to a satisfactory form of arbitration,^^ and all 

 other points of difference between America and England then caus- 

 ing friction and dispute and liable to imbitter their peaceable rela- 

 tions should be satisfactorily adjusted, took up for solution with 

 other questions that of the northeastern fisheries. In respect to that 

 question, the Treaty of Washington of May 8, 1871, extended facili- 

 ties and liberty to American fishermen to take fish in the sea fisheries, 

 and to British fishermen like facilities and liberty to catch fish in 

 the American Atlantic sea fisheries north of the thirty-ninth parallel 

 of north latitude.^^ The treaty provided for reciprocal free trade 

 for a term of years of " fish-oil " and the fish taken from the sea 

 fisheries between America, and Canada and Newfoundland. 



As a result of the Treaty of Washington of 1871, the difficulties 

 arising from the divergence of the views of the two governments as 

 to the rights of American citizens to catch fish in the British North 

 American colonial waters, were mostly, during the time the treaty 

 was in operation, smoothed over. However, in Fortune Bay, New- 

 foundland, on Sunday, January 6, 1878, the local inhabitants, pre- 



*' Francis Wharton, " A Digest of the International Law of the United 

 States," Washington, 1887, Vol. HI., p. 53. 



^' Thomas Balch, " International Courts of Arbitration, 1874," 3d edition, 

 Philadelphia, 1899. 



38 " Treaties and Conventions concluded between the United States of 

 America and other Powers since July 4, 1776," Washington, 1889, p. 486. 



