1602 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



because the Tribunal would say : " We can only decide in accordance 

 with the principles laid down in our Award, and the principles laid 

 down in our Award were that the United States could treat this as an 

 unregulated fishery. And therefore you must take the consequences 

 of it." The Tribunal that would sit it might not be the honourable 

 Arbitrators whom I have now the honour to address but whoever 

 might sit, being nominated as their representatives, would then be 

 compelled by your Award, by the principles laid down in your 

 Award, to say to Great Britain : " You have no remedy. The Award 

 decided that you had made an improvident bargain, a bargain in 

 which you failed to reserve any rights of testing the reasonableness 

 of their conduct, and therefore you must accept the consequences." 



I submit that with some hesitation, because I can imagine a good 

 deal to say on the other side against it. I am not putting it before 

 the Tribunal as a positive argument, an argument which I advance 

 with any great degree of certainty, as one absolutely conclusive, and 

 having nothing that can be urged against it, but I think the balance 

 is in favour of the conclusion that I have suggested. And therefore, 

 although Mr. Turner said that the United States were as willing as 

 Great Britain to submit to this Tribunal and of course a statemem 

 like that made by counsel for the United States would never be 

 neglected or repudiated by the United States themselves still, as a 

 matter of law and strict argument, I think that his promise went 

 beyond the case as he presented it on behalf of the United States. 



The first question, therefore, that arises, and it is one which has a 

 most material bearing subsequently on every part of the case, is: Is 

 this a regulated fishery? Are the United States demanding power 

 to treat it as an unregulated fishery? Again, I have listened with 

 great care to the argument of the United States in order to MH- 

 exactly what their attitude was on that. Do they mean, if they IM 

 the power for which they ask, to use it for the purpose of regulation, 

 or do they think that regulation is superfluous? 



Mr. Root has said in one of his letters that he is very willing to 

 co-operate with Great Britain for the purpose of regulation ; and of 

 course there is no one whose regulations we would accept more im- 

 plicitly than his; but we cannot treat this from the point of view of 

 the good-will of any particular Government. Governments' circum- 

 stances change, and Governments change. The lives of Governments 

 are not eternal, and their principles are not immutable. We cannot 

 quite tell what state of things might arise that would make it con- 

 venient or probable that the United States might take an attitude 

 inconvenient to Newfoundland again, as it has done before. And 

 so we have to look at the matter as a matter of strict right: and looking 

 at it as a matter of strict right, it seems to me that they are claiming 

 the right to demand an unregulated fishery; and looking at it as a 



