ARGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1623 



judged by antecedent right, judged by the historic test which Mr. 

 Turner said he was going to apply to the construction of this contract, 

 the United States have no ground whatever for saying now that they 

 are to enjoy this fishery as an unregulated fishery. 



What is the legal application, then, of these propositions? The 

 United States have suggested as one of their grounds of action 

 it, again, is rather hesitatingly suggested in their pleadings that 

 we. by our construction, offend against the admirable principle of 

 law that a man may not derogate from his own grant. Of course, 

 nobody would contest that as a proposition of law. If Great Britain 

 has made any grant, no matter how far it may extend, no matter 

 how it may cut into its own sovereign rights and status, it must 

 stand by its agreement. It cannot make any regulation that will 

 diminish or impair the effect of the rights that it has conferred upon 

 the United States. That is common ground between us both. But it 

 is put forward by the United States as though it were almost to be 

 assumed that we were seeking to derogate from our grant, because 

 they say : You are making regulations which touch not merely mat- 

 ters essential to your local jurisdiction like matters of public order, 

 but you are touching the very time and manner of the exercise by 

 us of the right that you have conferred upon us; and that is a thing 

 you have put beyond your control. That, I think, is fairly stating 

 the case for the United States from that point of view. But every- 

 thing depends upon what the grant is. Before it can be said that 

 Great Britain is seeking to derogate from its grant, we must ascer- 

 tain exactly what the grant is. For that purpose, says Mr. Turner 

 and he says it most rightly we must look at the historic part of the 

 case. I am glad that, in throwing away the historic part of the case 

 as a ground of action in the technical sense, he did retain it, as he 

 said he would, as an aid to the construction of the treaty, because 

 it aids us in this most material and vital part of our case : What was 

 the measure, the scope of the right which was conferred? For that 

 purpose we may look, and should look, to all the surrounding cir- 

 cumstances. I submit the surrounding circumstances show that the 

 very essence of that grant was subjection to the local jurisdiction. 

 I am going to show it further from the documents. Even without 

 approaching a document, I think that part of my case is established 

 by the evidence put before the Tribunal. You could not carry this 

 fishery on without some regulation at all. The regulations necessary 

 for the fishery were such as necessarily affected, to use the words of 

 the United States Argument, " the very matter of the time and man- 

 ner." Unless they went that far, they were of no use at all. You 

 could not do anything with regulations which were partial in their 

 application regulations by Great Britain which touched only 

 982 British fishermen and left American fishermen at large. That 



