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



The same idea, Mr. President, is also expressed at an earlier page of 

 Mr. Phelps' Argument, namely page 149, where he says: 



Statutes intenflefl for sncb protection may, therefore, have effect as statutes wifchin 

 the jurisdiction, and as defensive re<i;ulations witliout it, if the Government choose 

 so to enforce them, provided only tbat such enforcement is necessary for just defence, 

 and that the regulations are reasonable for that purpose. 



Now is there any foundation for this theory. I speak to lawyers 5 I 

 speak to those members of this Tribunal all of them who of course 

 have a very large exjjerience of the grounds upon which the action of 

 particular nations has been justified from time to time by the represent- 

 atives of various nations. Now, Mr. President, so far as I know, and 

 certainly so far as the instances given by the United States Govern- 

 ment are concerned, there is no instance prior to this case in which it 

 has ever been suggested that the writing down of a law on a municipal 

 Statute-book has any effect outside tlie dominions of that country so 

 far as foreigners are concerned. The cases in which foreigners have 

 been affected by municipal statutes are, without exception, prior to this 

 case, cases in which foreigners had gone within the dominions and 

 broken the law, or were intending to go within the dominions and break 

 the law. 



Lord Hannen. — So that you must add " or had immediately before 

 broken the law." 



Sir EiCHARD Webster.— That, of course, my Lord, is a further quali- 

 fication. I was putting it a little more generally myself. 1 say that, 

 of the authorities prior to this case, there is no trace of an authority 

 for suggesting that a municipal statute has any operation — in fact I do 

 not want it better admitted than in the language of my learned friend 

 Mr. Phelps himself, to use his expression at page 171: "they have no 

 authority". 



My ijoint is that, prior to the contention on behalf of the United 

 States, there was no suggestion by any writer or by any Judge that a 

 municipal Statute had any operation against foreigners, excepting in 

 the case where the foreigner either had entered the country or the ter- 

 ritorial waters, and broken the law there, or was intending to enter 

 those waters or that territory and intending to break the law. In 

 principle it would be indeed strange if international law was otherwise. 

 I know not the actual number of nations in the world that legislate for 

 their subjects now in some form of written legislation. If this theory 

 of my learned friend, Mr. Phelps, is correct; by simply writing down 

 in the Statute-book or whatever may be the form — in the Ukase if that 

 be the expression for Eussian legislation, at the present time, or what- 

 ever may be the name of the particular form of local municipal legisla- 

 tion which takes effect in a particular country — writing it down not in 

 a language known to other nations — because it is a mere accident that 

 in this case the two contending countries speak the same language — if 

 this theory be worth anything, all the Eussian municipal laws are 

 defensive regulations to be put in force against foreigners uj)on the 

 high seas, although they have never been communicated to foreigners 

 and although they speak of course by their Statute-book, or by the 

 statute in which it is expressed, simply and solely to the subjects. 



My first broad criticism with regard to this contention is that it is 

 inconsistent altogether with the principles that have affected the rela- 

 tions between nations, that the writing down of an enactment in the 

 laws of the country can have any effect upon foreigners who do not 

 intend to do anything, and do not, in fact, do anything within the ter- 

 ritorial limits. 



