1518 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



MR. ELDER: Even though the State Department had given no 

 formal certificate that they were entitled to exercise the privilege? 



DR. DRAGO: Yes. 



918 MR. ELDER: I think not, Sir. To put it the other way 

 round, which is the true way, and the way Mr. Root put it, 

 it is this: Newfoundland is entitled to know whether the man is an 

 American or not, and whether the privilege is being exercised by 

 persons who have been authorized by the United States to exercise 

 it, and the only way in which Newfoundland can get that information 

 is by something from the United States itself. 



To revert to trade and commerce, of which you have just spoken, 

 suppose we had continued the old barriers as to trade and some 

 nation, or nations, had a right to carry on commerce in the territory 

 of another nation, and a lot of people came to exercise that right, to 

 reside, to own lands, and to carry on commerce, which they would 

 have no right to do in the absence of a treaty with the country, the 

 country where they went to reside would be entitled to ask to see 

 their passports. That is the certificate of their Government that 

 they are the people who are entitled to exercise the right, and that, I 

 conceive, to be practically what the registry or fishing license is, for 

 a vessel, namely, it is the certificate of the Government that the vessel 

 is so owned and managed, and that the rights of the master and 

 owner of the vessel are being exercised by them in these waters. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK : That is absolutely right, because it is a 

 certificate of the identity of the individual as an inhabitant of the 

 United States. There is no doubt about that, and I presume that, 

 under the terms of the treaty, all that a man would be required to 

 produce would be his passport. But there is a vast difference between 

 a passport, which is the identification of an individual as a citizen 

 of a country, and a certificate which is an authority to do something. 



MR. ELDER: The certificate that the vessel receives is the identi- 

 fication of the ship as an American ship, owned by Americans, and it 

 carries with it as both Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Root said, in this 

 correspondence, the right both to trade and to fish. 



JUDGE GRAY : It is essentially a ship fishery ? 



MR. ELDER: Decidedly a ship fishery. To revert to the point to 

 which I had proceeded in my argument, the question then really is 

 this : is the United States to be required to give a different certificate 

 from the one that it has been giving for a hundred years to authorize 

 the exercise of this treaty privilege? In such case must the United 

 States, through its State Department, or through its Treasury Depart- 

 ment, certify to another fact, not merely that the vessel is owned 

 wholly in the United States, captained by an American citizen, and 

 that every officer of the watch is an American citizen, but that every 

 man on board the vessel is an inhabitant of the United States? To 



