1238 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



France they call it a " faute de mieux." In Canada we call it a des- 

 peration argument because it is merely the outcome of desperation. 

 There is very little else to be said for it. 



Consider the way Mr. Webster puts it; and I take Mr. Webster's 

 way because it is put as well there, perhaps, as anywhere else at p. 

 530 of the United States Case Appendix : 



" In the Proviso the word occurs in this connection, to wit 

 " ' That the American Fishermen shall be admitted to enter such 

 bays and harbors for the purpose of shelter & of repairing damage 

 therein, of purchasing wood, & of obtaining water, and for no other 

 purpose whatever.' 



" The signification of the word bay therefore, is known by its con- 

 comitants. It is a bay where shelter is to be had, where damages 

 may be repaired, and where wood and water may be obtained." 



The great difficulty about that, of course, is that if a bay must have 

 all those four qualifications, a great many 6-mile bays cannot 

 746 qualify as bays; because the bay must be a place where shelter 

 is to be had (and some 6-mile bays will not give that any more 

 than larger bays it depends altogether upon its shape and the way 

 the wind is blowing) ; it must be a place where damages may be re- 

 paired; it must be a place where wood may be purchased (and there- 

 fore there must be at least one man living there, and there are lots 

 of bays where there are no people living) ; and it must be a place 

 where water may be obtained (that, of course, means fresh water, 

 and there are lots of bays where there is no fresh water). And if it 

 is said that Mr. Webster did not mean that it must be a place where 

 all these four things may be obtained, but a place where any one of 

 them may be obtained, then every bay on those coasts will qualify as 

 a bay ; every one of them. Every one of them has one of those quali- 

 fications. Very few of them, perhaps, have all four. 



I do not dwell upon that argument, because it was a bad argument, 

 used to support a bad theory. If I show that the theory was sup- 

 ported only by such an argument as that, I think it helps me to show 

 that the theory was a bad one. 



This fishermen's theory, however, had something that could be said 

 in its favour, and that was that in the correspondence, and in other 

 places, could be found phrases in which people spoke of " 3 miles from 

 the shore." Lord Bathurst is said to have used that expression I 

 will come to that afterwards and a number of places are quoted by 

 the United States in which similar phraseology occurs. That was 

 something, at all events. It was very little, because it was mere 

 phraseology, used for the purpose of brevity, as one of the United 

 States officials (Mr. Fish, I think) said afterwards when he used it 

 himself. It is a mere phrase, used for the purpose of brevity, and is 

 nothing upon which can be placed an argument. But there was, at 



