20 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



left to lawyers alone as a matter of interest. Now, there was this 

 distinction carried by the use of the word "Uberty" which was 

 not necessarily carried by the general word "right." The liberty 

 came by grant from the general owner of the estate in which the 

 fishing, the hawking, or the hunting was to take place. It implied 

 that the grantee of the Hberty had acquired it from the general 

 owner. 



When the treaty of 1783 came to be made, John Adams claimed 

 that the United States was equal in title with Great Britain to the 

 fisheries which, you will remember, he speaks of as being one whole 

 fishery on the banks and coasts. Great Britain, willing to concede 

 that the United States had, irrespective of any grant from her, the 

 right to fish on the banks, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in other 

 places in the sea, was unwilling to concede that the United States 

 had, "without a grant from her, the right to fish upon the coasts. 

 At that time the old vague claims to well-nigh universal control 

 over the seas were beginning to fade away. The new idea of a 

 protective right over a limited territorial zone had not yet become 

 distinct, certain, and fixed; but Great Britain was willing to aban- 

 don her claims to exclu4e any other independent nation from the 

 Banks of Newfoundland and from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as she 

 had so long sought to exclude, and with great success, France and 

 Spain. She was willing to concede the right, and did concede the 

 right, to the United States as an independent nation to use that 

 fishery. But she insisted upon using in the grant of the right to 

 fish on the coasts a word which connoted the acquisition of the 

 right by the United States from her, and not as incident to the 

 independence of the United States. . That was very well explained 

 by Lord Bathurst in his letter of the 30th October, 1815, which 

 is found in the United States Case Appendix at p. 273. I will 

 read a few words from the paragraph at the foot of p. 276. He 

 said: 



"It is surely obvious that the word right is, throughout the treaty," — 



that is, the treaty of 1783 — 



"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." 



