1 84 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



to the Case of the United States. In this letter Lord Bathurst 

 states the position which Great Britain took and upon which she 

 stood before the world to justify herself for refusing to America 

 the further exercise of the rights granted by the treaty of 1783. 

 It is essential to his purpose that in arguing, in stating, and in main- 

 taining that position upon that all-important subject, he should 

 state the nature of the right, for the question whether it survived 

 or perished with the war depended upon what the nature of the right 

 Was, and in this paragraph that I wiU now read he states that. I 

 have read it once before for another purpose, but I beg you to bear 

 with me if I read it again in order that I may bring to your minds 

 the effect of it upon the argument which I am now endeavoring 

 to make. He says: 



"The Minister of the United States appears, by his letter, to be well 

 aware that Great Britain has always considered the liberty formerly enjoyed 

 by the United States of fishing within British Kmits, and using British terri- 

 tory, as derived from the third article of the treaty of 1783, and from that 

 alone," — 



Upon that his whole argument rested. He proceeds: 



"and that the claim of an independent state to occupy and use at its discre- 

 tion any portion of the territory of another, without compensation or corre- 

 sponding indulgence cannot rest on any other foundation than conventional 

 stipulation." 



There is the authentic and unimpeachable declaration of the 

 government of Great Britain as to the character of the right 

 that they conceived themselves to have granted to the United 

 States under the treaty of 1783, and that they authorized these 

 negotiators to regrant in the treaty of 1818. It was the right of 

 an independent state to occupy and use at its discretion a portion 

 of the territory of Great Britain. Of course, they would not 

 for a moment think of imposing upon such a right a reserva- 

 tion of the right of municipal legislation. That is why Lord 

 Bathurst, in this very letter complaining of the difficulties that 

 had arisen in the exercise of the right under the treaty of 1783, 

 proposed not to pass laws to remedy the injury, but proposed 

 joint regulations with the United States to remedy it. It is 

 because the United States so understood it that they accepted 



