* * "Where the necessary parbefore a court of equity, it is McDonald had the better right. ties," the court concluded, "are immaterial that the res of the controversy, whether it be real or personal property, is beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the tribunal. Without regard to the situation of the subject-matter, such courts consider the equities between the parties, and decree in personam according to those equities, and enforce obedience to their decrees by process in perThe decree of the court below will be sonam. reversed." Mr. Justice Miller, with the concurrence of Mr. Justice Field, dissented, on the ground (1) that the money in question was awarded to Great Britain under the treaty; (2) that the courts of the United States had no control "over the British Government or its agents in the distribution of the fund awarded to them;" (3) that the record did not show that the fund in controversy had ever been "voluntarily paid into court by the agent of that government;" and (4) that the case constituted "an indelicate attempt" by the courts of the country "to seize in transitu, for its own citizens," what the government had by treaty "agreed to pay to another government for its subject." CHAPTER XVI. THE HALIFAX COMMISSION. Among the subjects discussed by the peace Negotiations of 1782. commissioners of the United States and Great Britain at Paris in 1782, the two that were the most strongly contested and the last disposed of were those of the fisheries, and the compensation of the loyalists. The provisional articles of peace were concluded November 30, 1782. On the 25th of that month the British commissioners delivered to the American commissioners a third set of articles, containing fresh proposals of the British ministry, and representing the results of many weeks of negotiation. By the third article it was proposed that "the citizens of the United States shall have the liberty of taking fish of every kind on all the banks of Newfoundland, and also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and also to dry and cure their fish on the shores of the Isle of Sables and on the shores of any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, so long as such bays, harbors, and creeks shall continue and remain unsettled; on condition that the citizens of the said United States do not exercise the fishery, but at the distance of three leagues from all the coast belonging to Great Britain, as well those of the continent as those of the islands situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And as to what relates to the fishery on the coast of the Island of Cape Breton out of the said gulf, the citizens of the said United States shall not be permitted to exercise the said fishery, but at the distance of fifteen leagues from the coasts of the Island of Cape Breton." This proposal, by which the citizens of the United States were forbidden not only to dry fish on the shores of Nova Scotia, but also to take fish within three leagues of the coasts in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and within fifteen leagues of the coasts of Cape Breton outside of that gulf, was unacceptable to the American commissioners. On the 28th of November, John Wharton's Dip. Cor. Am. Rev. VI. 74–76. |