504 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[March, 
dium of their newspapers, charged their own imprudence upon 
him ! 
Our charge contended further, that if the Argentine RepubKc 
had even acquired the entire rights of sovereignty over the islands 
in question, yet even those rights were not such as to justify the 
repubhc in excluding citizens of the United States from the use 
of the fisheries. On this point he brought the argument to the 
following conclusions : 
" First — That the right of the United States to the ocean fish- 
ery, and in the bays, arms of the sea, gulfs, and other inlets in- 
capable of being fortified — is perfect and entire. 
" Second — That the right on the ocean within a marine league 
of the shore, where the approach cannot be injurious to the sov- 
ereign of the country, as it cannot be on uninhabited regions, or 
such as are occupied by savages — is equally perfect. ' 
" Third — That the shores of such regions can be used as freely 
as the waters : a right arising from the same principles. 
" Fourth — That a constant and uninterrupted use of the shores 
for the purposes of a fishery, would give the right perfect and 
entire — although settlements on such shares should be subse- 
quently formed or established." 
He contended, that if long and uninterrupted use could impart 
a right, the right of the United States was unimpeachable ; and 
to prove that the right may be so acquired, he cited Vattel, book 
i., ch. xxiii., § 287, where it is laid down as a rule, that if a nation 
has once acknowledged the common right of other nations to use 
fisheries on its own coasts, it cannot afterward exclude them : 
the fishery was then left in its primitive freedom, at least, with 
respect to those who had been accustomed to take advantage of 
it ; and so the English not having originally taken exclusive pos- 
session of the herring-fisheries on their coasts, it has become 
common to them with other nations. 
The acknowledgment spoken of in such cases may be ex- 
press or implied. A long-continued use, without interruption, 
is a virtual acknowledgment of the right to use ; and in the in- 
stance cited — the herring-fisheries on the English coasts — there 
has been no formal acknowledgment on the part of England, that 
other nations have a right to use that fishery : from the acquies- 
cence of England, the acknowledgment is inferred. 
