410 ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M. P. 



a junior counsel; but uotwithstaiiding that I liave by the accident of 

 my position for the last seven years not been called upon to fulfil those 

 duties, I have endeavoured to fulfil them at any rate to the best of my 

 ability. But I desire the Tribunal to understand — I knoA^ the lawyers 

 will — that that kind of work is not the best ineparation for an address 

 such as one would wish to deliver. Having made these very brief intro- 

 ductory observations, I will ask you now to permit me to go at once to 

 tlie particular points upon which I have to address you: and without, 

 so far as I may avoid it, any circumlocution whatever. 



I propose this afternoon to address myself to the first four questions 

 of Article VI. I hope that I can in the space of to-days' sitting bring 

 before the notice of the Tribunal all that it is necessary for me to urge 

 with regard to them. It is scarcely necessary, Mr. President, that I 

 should add, that, as my learned friend the Attorney General has done, 

 I decline to argue the question of Eegulations at all as a part or a 

 brancih of this subject. In my opinion, it would be contrary to the 

 scheme of the Treaty; it would be contrary to the compact made 

 between the parties before they were in Court; and although in the 

 exercise of tliat discretion and of that courtesy which is recognised 

 among members of our profession, on the wish being expressed by my 

 learned friends on the other side that they should be permitted to 

 mix ui) their arguments in one and deliver them at the same time, we 

 did not think it necessary furtlier to stand on our strict rights under 

 this Treaty, we think that we should not have been doing our duty if 

 we were, in anything we say on the five questions mentioned in the 6th 

 Article, to trespass or trench upon the subject matter of Eegulations. 



Now, Mr. President, Senator Morgan will forgive me if I refer to an 

 observation that has fallen from him more than once, and which was 

 alluded to by the Attorney General this morning, expressing a little 

 doubt as to whether the five points mentioned in Article VI are really 

 exhaustive of the questions of right submitted to this Tribunal. 



I make an admission at once, perhaps going a little way beyond what 

 the Attorney General has said, namely, that if the United States had 

 desired to raise any additional question of right beyond those five 

 questions, and had put them either in their Case, their Counter Case, 

 or their Argument, we should have been bound to meet them. I shall 

 not suggest that, under the points to which I will call attention 

 directly, it was not open to the United States to have raised before 

 this Tribunal any substantial question of right upon which they desired 

 to invite the decision of the Tribunal; but the point which I desire to 

 bring out prominently in relief, before I call attention to the learned 

 Senator's remark, is this, that at no stage of this case, in the Case, the 

 Counter Case, or the Argument, have the United States justified or 

 attempted to justify their action except upon something which is fairly 

 covered by and within the ambit of those five questions. 



Therefore if any point is to be started, if it is to be suggested that 

 the United States have other rights under and by virtue of which they 

 can maintain their position, or can justify their seizures, it would be 

 started after the oral argument on both sides, except the reply, had 

 been completed. I have not the slightest reason to believe that any- 

 thing of the kind will be done. I believe that perfect candour and fair- 

 ness have been shown by my learned opponents, — if they permit me to 

 call them my learned friends I shall desire to do so — in connection with 

 this matter; but I cannot help saying that if it were thought that 

 there was some other justification of the action of the United States 

 than that which is indicated in general in Article VI, expanded in par- 

 licular in the Case Counter Case and Argument, one would have 



