AEGUMENT OF SIK JAMES WINTER. 989 



" When two words or expressions are coupled together, one of 

 which generically includes the other, it is obvious that the more 

 general term is used in a meaning excluding the specific one. Though 

 the words ' cows,' ' sheep,' and ' horses,' for example, standing alone, 

 comprehend heifers, lambs, and ponies respectively, they would be 

 understood as excluding them if the latter words were coupled with 

 them. The word ' land,' which in its ordinary legal acceptation in- 

 cludes buildings standing upon it, is evidently used as excluding 

 them, when it is coupled with the word ' buildings.' If after impos- 

 ing a rate on houses, buildings, works, tenements, and hereditaments, 

 an Act exempted ' land,' this word would be restricted to land un- 

 burthened with houses, buildings, or works; which would otherwise 

 have been unnecessarily enumerated. In the 43 Eliz., c. 43, which 

 imposed a poor rate on the occupiers of ' lands,' houses, tithes and 

 ' coal-mines,' the same word was similarly limited in meaning as not 

 including mines. The mention of one kind of mine shows that the 

 Legislature understood the word ' land,' which in law comprehends 

 all mines, as not including any. 



" In the same way, although the word ' person ' in the abstract, 

 includes artificial persons, that is, corporations, the Statute of Uses, 

 which enacts that when a ' person ' stands seised of tenements to the 

 use of another ' person or body corporate,' the latter ' person or body ' 

 shall be deemed to be seised of them, is understood as using the word 

 ' person ' in the former part of the sentence as not including a body 

 corporate. Consequently, the statute does not apply where the legal 

 seisin is in a corporation. The same construction was given, for the 

 same reason, to the same word in the Mortmain Act, 9 Geo. II, c. 36. 



" It is in this sense that the maxim, occasionally misapplied in 

 argument, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, finds its true applica- 

 tion." 



On the same point I would take the liberty of citing from the 

 United States Counter-Case Appendix, at p. 524, from a report which 

 is printed of the speech of Sir Robert Bond on the Newfoundland 

 Fisheries before the Colonial Conference of 1907. Sir Robert Bond 

 introduced this Act which gave rise to this discussion, and in the 

 course of the speech he concludes in this way : 



" Vattel, probably the best authority upon the interpretation of 

 treaties, says : 



" ' The first general maxim of interpretation is, that it is not 

 allowable to interpret what has no need of interpretation. When 

 the wording is in clear and precise terms and its meaning is evident 

 and leads to no absurd conclusion, there can be no reason for refusing 

 to admit the meaning which such treaty naturally presents, and to 

 go elsewhere in search of conjectures in order to restrict or extend 

 it is but an attempt to elude it.' " 



That citation has already been read in other connections to this 

 Tribunal. 



Then I would make this further observation to the Tribunal of 

 what our contention is upon this matter. That is, that the meaning 

 of the parties being clear, having been ascertained clearly, there 

 is no necessity for referring to further matters that have occurred 



