3IO FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



and states it to Lord Bathurst, as being the position that Lord 

 Bathurst had stated to him, a matter about which an experienced 

 man, entering upon an argxmient, would, of course, be careful 

 and distinct. The statement which he made to Lord Bathurst, 

 of his understanding of Lord Bathurst's communication to him, 

 is Just above the middle of p. 269 of the American Appendix. It 

 is the second paragraph on that page. Mr. Adams said: 



"But, in disavowing the particular act of the officer who had presumed 

 to forbid American fishing vessels from approaching within sixty miles of 

 the American coast, and in assuring me that it had been the intention of this 

 Government, and the instructions given by your Lordship, not even to depawe 

 the American fishermen of any of their accustomed liberties during the preset 

 year, your Lordship did also express it as the intention of the British Govern- 

 ment to exclude the fishing vessels of the United States, hereafter, from the 

 liberty of fishing within one marine league of the shores of all the British 

 territories in North America, and from that of drying and curing their fish 

 on the unsettled parts of those territories." 



If there was any uncertainty about that, any mistake, any 

 .misunderstanding, there was a challenge to Lord Bathurst to state 

 it. But Lord Bathurst acknowledges the receipt of that letter — 

 Dr. Lohman has already called attention to that fact — on the 30th 

 October, and the acknowledgment and answer appear at p. 273 of 

 the American Appendix, near the foot of the page. I will read the 

 first paragraph of Lord Bathurst's letter: 



"The undersigned, one of His Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, 

 had the honor of receiving the letter of the minister of the United States, 

 dated the 2Sth ultimo, containing the grounds upon which the United States 

 conceive themselves, at the present time, entitled to prosecute their fisheries 

 within the limits of the British sovereignty, and to use British territories 

 for purposes connected with the fisheries." 



And then he proceeds to attempt to confute the arguments of 

 Mr. Adams in respect of the proposal of Lord Bathurst which Mr. 

 Adams had quoted to him in the letter that he is acknowledging. 

 I do not see how you can have any statement of the position of a 

 government more clear and distinct than we have it here; and I 

 need not cite to the Tribunal the record to show that these papers 

 were in the hands of the negotiators of 1818 on both sides. Both 

 the instructions sent by the State Department of the United States 



