AWARD OF THE TRIBUNAL 497 



execution" (sec. 13). Likewise the Act 10 and XI, Wm. Ill, Cap. 25 (1699) provides 

 that the Admirals do settle differences between the fishermen arising in respect of the 

 places to be assigned to the different vessels. As to Nova Scotia, the proclamation 

 of 1665 ordains that no one shall fish without license; that the hcensed fishermen are 

 obliged "to observe all laws and orders which now are rhade and published, or shall 

 hereafter be made and published in this jurisdiction," and that they shall not fish on 

 the Lord's day and shall not take fish at the time they come to spawn. The judgment 

 of the Chief Justice of Newfoundland, October 26th, 1820, is not held by the Tribunal 

 sufficient to set aside the proclamations referred to. After 1783, the statute 26 Geo. 

 Ill, Cap. 26, 1786, forbids "the use, on the shores of Newfoundland, of seines or 

 nets for catching cod by hauling on shore or taking into boat, with meshes less than 

 4 inches"; a prohibition which cannot be considered as hmited to the bank fishery. 

 The act for regulating the fisheries of New Brunswick, 1793, which forbids "the plac- 

 ing of nets or seines across any cove or creek in the Province so as to obstruct the 

 natural course of fish," and which makes specific provision for fishing in the Harbour 

 of St. John, as to the manner and time of fishing, cannot be read as being limited to 

 fishing from the shore. The act for regulating the fishing on the coast of Northumber- 

 land (1799) contains very elaborate dispositions concerning the fisheries in the bay of 

 Miramichi which were continued in 1823, 1829 and 1834. The statutes of Lower 

 Canada, 1788 and 1807, forbid the throwing overboard of offal. The fact that these 

 acts extend the prohibition over a greater distance than the first marine league from 

 the shore may make them nonoperative against foreigners without the territorial 

 limits of Great Britain, but is certainly no reason to deny their obligatory character 

 for foreigners within these limits; 



(h) Because the fact that Great Britain rarely exercised the right of regulation in 

 the period immediately succeeding 1818 is to be explained by various circumstances 

 and is not evidence of the non-existence of the right; 



(j) Because the words "in common with British subjects" tend to confirm the 

 opinion that the inhabitants of the United States were admitted to a regulated fishery; 



(j) Because the statute of Great Britain, 1819, which gives legislative sanction to 

 the Treaty of 1818, provides for the making of "regulations with relation to the tak- 

 ing, drying and curing of fish by inhabitants of the United States in 'common.'" 



For the purpose of such proof, it is further contended by the United States, in this 

 latter connection: 



(4) That the words "in common with British subjects" used in the Treaty should 

 not be held as importing a common subjection to regulation, but as intending to nega- 

 tive a possible pretention on the part of the inhabitants of the United States to liberties 

 of fishery exclusive of the right of British subjects to fish. 



The Tribunal is unable to agree with this contention: 



(a) Because such an interpretation is inconsistent with the historical basis of the 

 American fishing liberty. The ground on which Mr. Adams founded the American 

 right in 1782 was that the people then constituting the United States had always, 

 when still under British rule, a part in these fisheries and that they must continue to 

 enjoy their past right in the future. He proposed "that the subjects of His Britannic 

 Majesty and the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmolested the 

 right to take fish . . . where the inhabitants of both countries used, at any time 

 heretofore, to fish." The theory of the partition of the fisheries, which by the 

 American negotiators had been advanced with so much force, negatives the assump- 

 tion that the United States could ever pretend to an exclusive right to fish on the 



