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



Now I come to a part of the case to which very great imiiortauce was 

 attached by my friend Mr. Phelps. I refer to the passages ou jiages 155 

 to 157, on the subject of Newfoundhmd, and if Mr. Phelps' assertions 

 were well founded with reference to Newfoundland he indeed would be 

 able to administer a very serious blow to our conteution. He, in effect 

 asserts that Great Britain and Canada have asserted different rights in 

 the Atlantic to those which they are now contending for in the Pacific. 



He says ou page 157, that 



There cannot be one international law for the Atlantic and another for the Pacific. 

 If the seals may be treated like the fish, as only/ero; nalurce and not property, if the 

 maintenance of the herd in the Pribilof Islands is only a fishery, how then can the 

 .case be distinguished from that of the fisheries of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. 



Mr. President, if that argument was worth anything at all it means 

 ■simply this : that Great Britian (and Canada, representing the rights 

 of Great Britain) have either prevented or claimed to prevent the 

 United States from enjoying the rights of fishing outside the three-mile 

 limit or outside territorial waters in the Atlantic. Sir, I will make good 

 "what I am about to say by reference, but I assert that since the year 

 1783 such a conteution has been impossible, and if I choose to go ba<}k 

 I say that long before that time the contention had disappeared ; but 

 from the year 1783 down to the present time British, French, United 

 States, and for all I know other nationals — but these are sufficient for 

 my purpose — have been fishing side by side ou the banks of Newfound- 

 laud 50 or 60 miles from shore, or whatever the distance is, without a 

 shadow of a suggestion that the United States people were there either 

 by grant, by sufferance, by treaty, or in any other way than as exer- 

 cising the common right of all nations. Mr. President, the tribunal 

 "Will not think that I am attaching undue importance to this incident, 

 when I remind you that at pages 156 and 157, in order to enforce his 

 argument and, if he were well justified, to pour, contempt on the posi- 

 tion of Great Britain, Mr. Phelps has gone the length of saying : 



It is enough to perceive that it never occurred to the United States Government 

 or its eminent representatives to claim, far less to the British Government to con- 

 cede, nor to any diplomatist or writer, either in 1783 or 1815 to conceive, that these 

 fisheries, extending far beyond and outside of any limit of territorial jurisdiction 

 •over the sea that ever was asserted there or elsewhere, were the general property of 

 lUiankind, or that a participation in them was a part of the liberty of the open sea. 



Sir, I do not wonder that this argument, forcible, strong, and 

 very caustic — indeed much more than an orffumentmn ad hominem — 

 extremely powerful against my contention made an impression on the 

 Tribunal, and accordingly I find ou page 715 of the unrevised note — I 

 am not able at present to give the revised page because it is not yet 

 printed — Senator Morgan said this to Sir Charles Russell. 



You made some reference to the Statesmanship of Mr. Sumner as being superior 

 to the conception, as I understood you, that there could be any purchase and sale 

 of fisheries in the open sea. That opinion has not always prevailed among the 

 statesmen of the United States, I will say for the reason particularly that in our 

 treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1873 we found it necessary to incorporate in 

 the treaty the following: 



It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmo- 

 lested right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and all other banks of 

 Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all other places in the sea where the 

 inhabitants of both countries propose to fish. 



Of course if we had the open natural right of all mankind to fish in the sea that 

 provision was entirely unnecessary in that treaty it was insisted on and put in. 



The President. — I believe Senator Morgan it was an allusion to previous treaties 

 with France. 



When the real facts are put before the Tribunal it will be seen that, 

 instead of affording as my friend Mr. Phelps thought it would afford, 



