INTRODUCTION cxiii 



were not bays generally, but bays within His Majesty's dominions in 

 America not included within the treaty coast; that the language of the 

 treaty, to quote Sir Robert Finlay's canon of interpretation, must be 

 "read in the light of all the circumstances as they existed at the time when 

 it was entered into"; that the "history of that time is, for that purpose, 

 very material," and that the attending circumstances and the history of 

 the time show that the negotiators had in mind not all bays, but only 

 those bays and those waters subject to the jurisdiction of Great Britain. 



Counsel for the United States laid, and it would seem properly laid, 

 great stress upon the intention of the parties and quoted with approval 

 the following view of Chancellor Kent: 



"The intention is to be collected from the occasion and necessity of the law, from 

 the mischief felt, and the remedy in view, and the intention is to be taken or presumed 

 according to what is consonant to reason and good discretion." ' 



Great Britain insisted that the War of 1812 abrogated the fishing 

 liberty of 1783, a contention strenuously denied by the United States, 

 and Great Britain was unwilling to regrant the fishing liberty in its full 

 extent, although it was wilUng to grant the liberty subject to modifi- 

 cations. But, to quote Lord Bathurst's elaborate note to Mr. John 

 Quincy Adams, 



"Great Britain can only offer the concession in a way which shall effectually 

 protect her own subjects from such obstructions to their lawful enterprises as they 

 too frequently experienced immediately previous to the late war, and which are, 

 from the very nature, calculated to produce collision and disunion between the two 

 States."* 



In the very next place, Lord Bathurst, speaking as one of His 

 Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, formulated the objections to a 

 regrant of the liberty in the terms of 1783: 



"It was not of fair competition that His Majesty's Government had reason to 

 complain, but of the preoccupation of British harbours and creeks, in North America 

 by the fishing vessels of the United States, and the forcible exclusion of British vessels 

 from places where the fishery might be most advantageously conducted. They had, 

 likewise, reason to complain of the clandestine introduction of prohibited goods into 

 the British Colonies by American vessels ostensibly engaged in the fishing trade, to 

 the great injury of the British revenue." ' 



In this passage Lord Bathurst stated the "mischief felt" just as in 

 the previous passage he had stated the remedy; namely, a regrant imder 

 modifications. In the next two paragraphs of his very important note 



' Oral Argument, Vol. I, p. 723. 



' Note of October 30, 1815. (Appendix, pp. jpp, 403; Appendix, British Case, pp. 69-72; 

 Appendix, U. S. Case, p. 273.) 



'Appendix, pp. sgg, 403; Appendix, British Case, pp. 69-72; Appendix, U. S. Case, 

 P- 273) 



