ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 21 



You will remember that, in some of these letters, there is a 

 statement of one of the negotiators speaking of the word "right" 

 as being unpleasing to the Enghsh people in that relation because 

 it would indicate that the United States did not get it from them 

 but held it by original title as against them; not that the word 

 "right" itself was unpleasant. There is no word, perhaps, so pleas- 

 ing to the Enghsh ear as the word "right," but it was because of 

 the inference that would be drawn from its use. So the word "lib- 

 erty" was applied to this particular kind of right that must come by 

 grant from another. The same distinction is very well stated by 

 Mr. Webster in that unfinished memorandum of which we have 

 heard. I read from p. 526 of the United States Case Appendix. 

 He says: 



"It is admitted that by these treaties," — 



that is, the preUminary treaty of 1782 and the treaty of 1783 — 



"the right of approaching immediately to, and using the shore for drying fish, 

 is called a liberty, throughout this discussion it is important to keep up con- 

 stantly the plain distinction between an acknowledged right and a conceded 

 liberty." 



The words were taken into tb£ treaty of 1818 from the treaty 

 of 1783, and they were taken into the treaty of 1783 from the French- 

 English treaty of 1763. The treaty of 1763, United States Case 

 Appendix, vol. I, p. 52, says: 



"The Subjects of France shall have the liberty of Fishing and Drying, 

 on a part of the coasts of the Island of Newfoundland, such as is specified in 

 Article XIK of the Treaty of Utrecht." 



The relations between these French treaties and the American 

 treaty of 1783 was very pecuUar. You will remember that the two 

 treaties — the one between Great Britain and France and the one 

 between Great Britain and the United States — were made on the 

 3rd September, , 1783. They ended a war in which France and 

 the United States were allies against Great Britain, and they were 

 the product of a connected negotiation. The preamble of the treaty 

 between Great Britain and the United States of the 3rd September, 

 1783, recites, p. 23 of the American Appendix: 



