INTRODUCTION xxi 



secured to France by the Treaties of Utrecht and of Versailles, and that it 

 was in technical language a modus, whether it be a modus operandi or a 

 modus Vivendi, for the exercise of fishing rights acknowledged by both 

 nations to belong to France for the benefit of its subjects engaged in the 

 Newfoundland fisheries. 



The Treaty of 1783, as explained by the Declaration of the same date, 

 together with the act of ParUament of 1788 empowering the King to 

 execute its provisions,^ was the measure of the French rights until the 

 year 1904, when they were modified by mutual agreement in a way 

 apparently satisfactory to both countries.^ 



It is important to form a clear conception of the British view of the 

 right secured to France by the various treaties and the Declaration of 

 1783, because the American right of 1783 and 1818 is couched in precisely 

 the same terms, giving a liberty to fish in British waters and the liberty 

 to dry and cure fish on certain specified portions of British territory. 

 It has never been maintained by the United States that the rights under 

 the Treaty of 1783 or the Convention of 1818 were exclusive. That is 

 to say, British subjects were entitled to fish within the same waters and 

 the United States has only claimed that the competition between the 

 American and the British fishermen, which must necessarily exist, should 

 nevertheless be fair. If it should appear that Great Britain denied the 

 exclusive character of French fishing rights, and such has always been 

 the British view, it would follow necessarily that the right granted to 

 France and the right granted to the United States in identical language 

 were identical and that the interpretation of each should be the same. 

 From the many state papers dealing with this subject two only are quoted 

 as setting forth with clearness and precision the British view. 



In 1838 Lord Palmerston wrote: 



"The British Government has never understood the Declaration to have had for 

 its object to deprive British subjects of the right to participate with the French in 

 taking fish at sea off that shore, provided they did so without interrupting the French 

 cod fishery." ' 



'For text o( the Act see Appendix pp. 376, 377. 



^ At the close of the Napoleonic wars between Great Britain and France, the French treaty 

 rights were recognized as they existed at the outbreak of the war in 1792. 



"The French right of Fishery upon the Great Bank of Newfoundland, upon the Coasts of 

 the Island of that name, and of the adjacent Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, shall be replaced 

 upon the footing on which it stood in 1792." (Treaty of May 30, 1814, Appendix, U. S. Case, 

 Vol. I, p. 57) 



"The Treaty of Paris of the 30th of May, 1814, and the final Act of the Congress at Vienna 

 of the gth of June, 1815, are confirmed, and shall be maintained in all such of their enactments 

 which shall not have been modified by the Articles of the present Treaty." (Treaty of Novem- 

 ber 20, 1815, Appendix, U. S. Case, Vol. I, p. 57.) 



' Lord Palmerston's note of July 10, 1838, to the French Ambassador, Count Sebastiani. 

 (Appendix, U. S. Case, Vol. II, p. 1098.) 



