

QUESTION ONE. 37 



41 jurisdiction of the State in which those acts are done. There 

 is hardly a nation in the world which is not bound by treaty 



to permit the subjects of some other Power to have access to its terri- 

 tories for some purposes a liberty to trade is a common instance. 

 But it has never been contended that grants such as these carry with 

 them any immunity from the laws of the country which makes them, 

 or that aliens trading under treaty liberties are not subject to the 

 municipal laws which regulate the trade of the country. Grants of 

 this kind are made on the understanding that they must be exer- 

 cised subject to such laws and regulations as apply to the subjects 

 of the State which makes them. No State can be presumed to have 

 been willing to put aliens in a better position than its own subjects, 

 or to have renounced the right to regulate trade within its own terri- 

 tories, in the absence of express words to that effect, and the same 

 argument applies equally to other liberties, including such a liberty 

 as that which is now under discussion. This principle is clearly 

 stated, and is illustrated by a reference to the very matter now in 

 dispute, by Mr. Hall in a passage to which His Majesty's Govern- 

 ment begs leave to refer the tribunal : 



" Whenever, or in so far as, a state does not contract itself out of 

 its fundamental legal rights by express language, a treaty must be so 

 construed as to give effect to those rights. Thus, for example, no 

 treaty can be taken to restrict by implication the exercise of rights of 

 sovereignty, or property, or self-preservation. Any restriction of 

 such rights must be effected in a clear and distinct manner. A case 

 illustrative of this rule is afforded by a recent dispute between Great 

 Britain and the United States. By the treaty of Washington of 

 1871, it was provided that the inhabitants of the United States should 

 have liberty, in common with the subjects of Great Britain, to take 

 fish upon the Atlantic coasts of British North America. Subse- 

 quently to the conclusion of the treaty, the Legislature of Newfound- 

 land passed laws with the object of preserving the fish off the shores 

 of the colony; a close time was instituted, a minimum size of mesh 

 was prescribed for nets, and a certain mode of using the seine was 

 prohibited. These regulations were disregarded by fishermen of the 

 United States; disturbances occurred at Fortune Bay between them 

 and the colonial fishermen, and the matter became a subject of diplo- 

 matic correspondence, in the course of which the scope of the treaty 

 came under discussion. It was argued by the United States that the 

 fishery rights conceded by the treaty were absolute, and were to be 

 ' exercised wholly free from the restraints and regulations 



42 of the statutes of Newfoundland now set up as authority over 

 our fishermen, and from any other regulations of fishing now 



in force or that may hereafter be enacted by that Government ; ' in 

 other words, it was contended that the simple grant to foreign sub- 

 92909 S. Doc. 870, 61-3, vol 4 4 



