INTRODUCTION cxvii 



at the request of the British negotiators and properly, because Great 

 Britain was granting to the inhabitants of the United States a right to 

 fish within British jurisdiction, and the term "liberty" is the appropriate 

 term to convey a right vested in the grantor. 



It was not necessary to define coasts, bays, creeks, and harbors, because 

 the inhabitants of the United States were granted the liberty to fish on 

 all the coasts and in all the bays, creeks, and harbors. The Convention 

 of 1818 did not renounce the right to fish in those waters which were 

 considered high seas, for notwithstanding the renunciation, the rights 

 acknowledged by the first sentence of the Third Article of the Treaty of 

 1783 were as unaffected by the renunciation as they were by the War 

 of 1812. 



What, then, did the American commissioners renounce by the Con- 

 vention of 181 8 ? The answer of the United States always has been the 

 liberty to take, dry, and cure fish within the territorial waters of British 

 North America, not specifically retained by the Convention, and counsel 

 for the United States argued that the understanding of the American 

 negotiators was confirmed by the acts of the British Government and 

 the authoritative expressions of statesmen of both countries prior to the 

 year 1818, when engaged in considering the question of maritime juris- 

 diction in general or the fisheries in particular. Attention is first called 

 to the Treaty of 1806 between Great Britain and the United States, 

 which the United States fafled to ratify, because it did not include the 

 matter of impressment, then of fundamental importance to the United 

 States. By means of this treaty the United States sought the permis- 

 sion and co-operation of Great Britain to extend maritime jurisdiction 

 from three to five miles, an extension which appears in Article XII of 

 the proposed treaty.' The United States also endeavored, but unsuc- 

 cessfully, to obtain an article extending the jurisdiction of the contracting 

 parties to "the harbours or the chambers formed by headlands, or any- 

 where at sea, within the distance of four leagues from the shore, or from 

 a right line from one headland to another." ^ 



It is obvious that a clause for this purpose would be unnecessary, if 

 Great Britain and the United States exercised as of right jurisdiction 

 within harbors or chambers formed by headlands beyond the ordinary 

 three mile limit. Great Britain refused such an article in the proposed 

 treaty because it did not wish to renounce at that time the right to visit 

 and search American vessels for British deserters within the sphere of 

 the proposed exclusion.' 



' Appendix, p. 378; Appendix, U. S. Counter Case, p. 18; Appendix, British Case, p. 24. 



* Appendix, British Case, p. 60. 



' "The distance of a cannon shot from shore is as far as we have been able to ascertain 



