ARGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1611 



alty by an early statute (I had better give the date here a statute 

 of 1665), a penalty on all persons going into the jurisdiction and fish- 

 ing without a licence. The Nova Scotians had a little of that local 

 jealousy which is only one aspect of local patriotism. They did not 

 like the New England people to come and fish off their coasts with- 

 out paying something for it, and so no vessel is to come from New 

 England to the Nova Scotian jurisdiction without a licence. 



So that the antecedent right there was not a very valuable one. 

 They had to pay for it, and when they got there they were subject 

 again to the local jurisdiction. 



So that there was nothing in the nature of ownership, there was 

 nothing in their antecedent right upon which they could found any 

 claim to dominium. That claim to dominium comes entirely from 

 the somewhat fervent literature with which Mr. Adams (and I speak 

 very respectfully of him, of course) enriched the controversy at that 

 time. He was a great patriot and a great man, but when he stepped 

 into the sphere of legal inference I am not quite so sure that he shone 

 altogether at his best. And, great patriots do not always make very 

 great historians. I think, as one comes to criticise these despatches, 

 one may occasionally make that observation of Mr. Adams, although 

 with great respect of so great a man. 



But there was nothing then upon which any claim of ownership 

 could be founded, in the rights of these colonies, antecedent to the 

 revolution. They enjoyed a limited and precarious liberty, subject 

 absolutely to the local jurisdiction. 



Well now, how much did they enjoy of that with regard to the 

 inshore fisheries ? We have from Mr. Turner many extracts in which 

 the United States Commissioners lay stress upon their claim to the 

 fisheries. They do it in earnest terms, fervent terms, just terms. I 

 make no complaint whatever of the language they use with regard 

 to the fisheries in the high seas, but it was the fisheries in the high 

 seas they were talking about. 



Any one listening to Mr. Turner's very eloquent speech would have 

 thought that really here the fisheries in dispute before this Tribunal 

 were the fisheries of which Mr. Adams had been writing in such 

 fervent terms. Not at all. The fisheries about which Mr. Adams 

 made his eloquent appeals were the bank fisheries. He cared very 

 little indeed, nobody cared much, for the inshore fisheries, which 

 are the subject of enquiry here. And, throughout the whole of the 

 United States Case, as presented in their documents, as put forward 

 in the able speeches of their counsel, there runs this fallacy of apply- 

 ing the language, appeals, principles and documents, referring to 

 the fisheries in the high seas on the banks of Newfoundland, as if 

 they referred to these scrappy little fishing rights which are the sub- 

 ject of enquiry before us. 



