1240 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



There is merely one question the construction of the treaty. Of 

 course the construction of the treaty is terribly against that conten- 

 tion ; but you are bothered with the one point only. 



The territorial theory, however, has to meet two great diffi- 

 747 culties. In the first place you must prove that when the treaty 

 spoke of a bay it meant a territorial bay. That is rather 

 formidable something before which counsel might very well hesi- 

 tate. When it says " any bay " you must strike out " any " and put 

 in " territorial." And that is difficult. But that is not the only 

 difficulty. Another is the impossibility of proving that, according 

 to international law, a territorial bay cannot be more than 6 miles 

 wide. That is formidable. I have not got Mr. Warren's written 

 Argument yet, but we listened to Senator Turner, and we have 

 investigated the subject to some extent, and I think I am not wrong 

 in saying that if anybody is going to undertake to prove that terri- 

 torial bays were only such bodies of water as were not greater than 

 G miles across their headlands, in 1818, or in 1783, or at the present 

 time, he has a task that I, for one, would not like to have to cope 

 with, before this Tribunal or before anybody. 



These. Sirs, are the two difficulties involved in this new territorial 

 idea in the first place, changing the treaty; in the second place, 

 proving from international law something that it is quite impossible 

 to prove from international law. And I think I can say that no 

 jurist I do not need to weigh or number the jurists before 1818 and 

 1783 but I say that no jurist prior to those dates had laid down as 

 law that territorial " bays " must be less than 6 miles wide. If one 

 can be found (and I shall read Mr. Warren's Argument with interest 

 in order to ascertain what his investigations have discovered), I will 

 still put to him the question which Mr. Turner said was the crucial 

 one : " What do the nations say ? " And I ask where was there any 

 nation in 1783 or in 1818 where is there any nation now that says 

 its territorial bays (I do not care what it says about other people's 

 bays), that its territorial bays are limited to 6 miles? Certainly 

 Sirs, the United States have never said so. They have not a bay, or 

 anything that looks like a bay, that is not a bay not one. Although 

 they have not, they think there are lots of them a little further north. 



That was the legal difficulty raised by the territorial idea, but 

 practically it produced other difficulties. On the coast-line there 

 might be a certain conformation of water 6 miles wide I mean out 

 on the open coast-line. They would say that was a bay. I am not 

 speaking now of Mr. Warren's new idea, something we never heard 

 of until he spoke. I am speaking of the United States idea in 1877, 

 when you had to tatas a* bay as at the mouth. On that idea, I say, 

 you might have a body of water on the coast 6 miles wide that would 

 be a bay. Go down to the other end of a larger body of water for 



