22 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



"And having for this desirable end" — 



that is, peace — 



"already laid the foundation of peace and reconciliation by the provisional 

 articles, signed at Paris, on the 30th of Nov'r, 1782, by the commissioners 

 empowered on each part, which articles were agreed to be inserted in and to 

 constitute the treaty of peace proposed to be concluded between the Crown of 

 Great Britain and the said United States, but which treaty was not to be con- 

 cluded until terms of peace should be agreed upon between Great Britain and 

 France, and His Britannic Majesty should be ready to conclude such treaty 

 accordingly, and the treaty between Great Britain and France having since 

 been concluded." 



So you have these two treaties interdependent, necessarily, 

 because of the subject-matter, making a peace in which the two are 

 allied against the third, in the same terms, made upon the same day 

 and both treating of the subject of the fisheries, the treaty with 

 France expressly continuing, with certain modifications, the rights, 

 the liberty, granted in 1763, which continued, with certain modifi- 

 cation, the right granted in 1713, and the same word used in the 

 American treaty to describe the right granted which was used in the 

 French treaties to describe the right granted. I will not weary 

 the court by arguing that in 1783, or in 1818, it was well known to 

 the negotiators that the words "shall have the liberty to take fish" 

 in the French treaty of 1763 conferred a right on France, that 

 it was no mere acquiescence or temporary concession, or good- 

 natured assent, but that it was the grant of a right and of a right 

 that France had been asserting with a degree of boldness and uncom- 

 promising insistence against Great Britain for three generations — 

 for 105 years bef6re this treaty of 1818 was made. 



So it is quite clear that the word "Hberty" was understood by 

 the negotiators to be descriptive of a right, and whenever the repre- 

 sentatives of the two countries come to use the word, in such cir- 

 cumstances that there is no occasion to make this discrimination 

 as to the origin of the right, they use the two words interchangeably. 

 If you look at the treaty of 1854, which is in the United States Case 

 Appendix, p. 25, you will see in the first article that there was 

 provision for the appointment of commissioners to settle the limits 

 within which the liberty conferred by that treaty was to be exer- 

 cised. The treaty of 1854, you will remember, conferred the liberty 



