ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 299 



position, and it is reasonable to infer that Great Britain was unwill- 

 ing to take that position, because she felt the weakness of her posi- 

 tion in regard to the construction of the renunciation clause. If we 

 could ever see that reasoned exposition that went from the Foreign 

 Office to the Colonial Office, and is referred to by Lord Stanley in 

 his announcement of the decision of Great Britain in 1845 — 'if 

 we could see that, we should know; but circumstantial evidence of 

 what that contained is clear enough. Observe, I am not seeking 

 to hold Great Britain to that decision. We do not base anything 

 upon that decision, because she withdrew from it upon the objection 

 of her colony. Her colony objected that it would be a bitter stroke 

 at the poUcy and the interests of the colony, and Great Britain 

 withdrew from it; but it remains that that is what she thought 

 about the merits of this question. 



There is the evidence that that is what she thought. She thought 

 that our construction was right. If she had been willing to say 

 this is "within our territorial waters," she would have thought that, 

 no matter whether our construction was right or wrong, it was her 

 duty to exclude our fishermen from those waters in the interest to 

 her colony. 



But, there is a further step to be taken in my argument. Not 

 only had Great Britain always refrained from asserting any juris- 

 diction over those bays, refrained from conferring it upon her colo- 

 nies, refrained from planting herself upon it, refused to permit 

 jurisdiction to be created by convention with the United States, 

 but she expressly excluded those waters from the limits of her 

 maritime or territorial jurisdiction in the negotiation of the treaty 

 of 1818. She expressly put a limit upon the maritime jurisdiction 

 from which she proposed to exclude American fishermen, exactly 

 as she put a Hmit upon territorial jurisdiction, or maritime juris- 

 diction, imder the terms of the treaty of 1806, and it was a hmit 

 which excluded from that jurisdiction those sheets of water. 



The first paper to which I turn in support of that proposition is 

 the Baker letter, so often referred to, the letter of Lord Bathurst 

 to Mr. Baker — Mr. Anthony St. John Baker, who was charge 

 d'affaires at Washington — dated 7th September, 1815, British 

 Case Appendix, p. 64. You will remember that the negotiators 

 of 1814, after making the treaty of peace of that year, separated 



