ARGUMENT OF SIB WILLIAM BOBSON. 1595 



not succeeded in overcoming, that they have no contract in which 

 any such condition of things as this is foreshadowed and agreed to 

 on the part of Great Britain. They have no such contract at all. 

 They have a contract constituting a right, creating that which they 

 are pleased to call a servitude, and a contract, therefore, which like 

 all others, in some degree a substantial degree limits what I have 

 called the exercise of our sovereign powers: but when we go further 

 and ask where is the contract which carries with it a transfer, a con- 

 veyance of our sovereign power which is something more than a 

 mere limitation or restriction we are referred to implications and 

 international law, and the history of the parties, and to various other 

 grounds with which it will be my duty to deal. 



If we have agreed to such a condition of things there is no more 

 to be said about it. The contract binds us. But the question here 

 and it is the whole question before this Tribunal is: "Have we 

 agreed?" Is there a contract, is there a bargain, between Great 

 Britain and the United States that the United States shall possess 

 this novel and remarkable power, one only exercised by a conquering 

 and dominant State, or scarcely ever exercised except by a conquering 

 and dominant State, over the territory of Great Britain ? 



The United States has been somewhat hard put to it to show a con- 

 tract. And its very able and learned counsel have endeavoured to 

 suggest various grounds of action which should be independent of 

 contract. Well, now, all those grounds of action look very well 

 and sound very well while they are being dealt with by learned 

 counsel; but they have to be subjected to a somewhat minute exam- 

 ination to see whether they really carry their argument home. 



The United States come into Court with two grounds of action, as 

 I may call them. They claim this joint ownership or joint sover- 

 eignty in the territory of Great Britain, or in part of their territory, 

 on two grounds : They said first of all that the sovereign right they 

 thus sought to establish was a continuance of their original right as 

 joint owners with Great Britain of the then British Empire. I un- 

 derstood, in reading the Case and Counter-Case, that that was put 

 forward as a definite and sufficient reason why the United States 

 should have an affirmative answer to Question 1. Such a ground as 

 that was substantially independent of grant altogether. The grant 

 in such a case, as, indeed, the United States themselves asserted, was 

 a mere recognition of their original sovereignty a sovereignty un- 

 broken in one sense and enlarged, and not diminished by the revolu- 

 tion. That, then, was a ground independent of grant, The other 

 ground is dependent entirely upon grant, and, indeed, is totally in- 

 consistent with the theory of antecedent sovereignty, or antecedent 

 rights, which the United States first put forward. They say now 

 that there was a grant by Great Britain of a servitude, and that a 



