ARGUMENT OF SAMUEL, J. ELDER. 1505 



the entire coast of the continent, that they did not make that claim, 

 and the United States in its Counter-Case, after the British Case had 

 been received, pointed out the very absurdity that Great Britain 

 had avoided by claiming an interior coast-line. It pointed out a 

 further absurdity, viz., that there could not be two political coast- 

 lines, an interior coast-line and an exterior coast-line. But the main 

 point of my argument is that any claim on the part of counsel here, 

 that the United States was playing hop, skip, and jump with that 

 coast, jumping 14 miles and 20 miles and 31 miles, is entirely outside 

 of the question. The argument that the United States was making 

 was that, taking Great Britain's own claim of 10-mile bays, it was 

 entirely possible to draw an outside line, using the islands as the out- 

 side coast-line. And that argument seems to have prevailed, and was 

 successful. 



Question 2 reads as follows: 



" Have the inhabitants of the United States, while exercising the 

 liberties referred to in said article, a right to employ as members of 

 the fishing crews of their vessels persons not inhabitants of the 

 United States ? " 



Though the treaty may be entirely familiar to the Tribunal, I 

 revert to it. on the previous page, for a moment : 



" It is agreed between the High contracting parties that the inhabi- 

 tants of the said United States shall have forever, in common," &c. 



The right of fishery. 



Sir Edward Grey, in his letter which appears at pp. 972 and 973 

 of the United States Case Appendix, said, as he had said in many 

 other places, that this right was confined to the inhabitants of 

 the United States. At the bottom of p. 972, referring to Mr. Root's 

 six propositions, and taking the first of them 



" Proposition 1 states : ' Any American vessel is entitled to go into 

 the waters of the Treaty Coast and take fish of any kind. She derives 

 this right from the Treaty (or from the conditions existing prior 

 to the Treaty and recognized by it) and not from any permission or 

 authority proceeding from the Government of Newfoundland.' 



" The privilege of fishing conceded by Article I of the Convention 

 of 1818 is conceded, not to American vessels, but to inhabitants of 

 the United States and to American fishermen. 



" His Majesty's Government are unable to agree to this or any 



of the subsequent propositions if they are meant to assert any 



right of American vessels to prosecute the fishery under the 



910 Convention of 1818 except when the fishery is carried on by 



inhabitants of the United States. The Convention confers no 



rights on American vessels as such." 



And Sir Robert Finlay puts it in the same way at p. 216 of his 

 argument : 



" The United States, throughout this argument, put the case in 

 this way, as they did in their despatches, that this is a right conferred 



