1624 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



would be an unregulated fishery, with the additional chances of 

 disorder owing to confusion of law. And, therefore, the grant was 

 not as the United States have assumed, the grant of a sovereign 

 right ; it was the grant of what I may call a subordinate right, though 

 that is not a very happy phrase. It is a grant as between States of 

 the character that we are familiar with as between individuals. 

 Every right granted under municipal law is subject to municipal 

 law. And in this particular case the right that they were granted 

 was a right not to be excluded from these fisheries, a right to come 

 as they had come I here use their own argument on which such 

 stress was laid a right to come as they had come subject to the 

 local law. They had never had any greater right. That is the right 

 which, as I shall show from a very few references to the documents 

 they will be very few, because after all they are very conclusive 

 that is the right which they knew they were getting, and which they 

 said they were getting. That is a further proposition that I shall 

 show. Anyhow, there is no derogation from the grant. That is, I 

 think, perhaps all I need say, at all events for the present, on that 

 part of the case. 



Then negotiations began, and the Tribunal has listened with more 

 than ordinary judicial patience, great as we members of the Bar know 

 judicial patience to be, to the long, but I think always relevant, 

 always material extracts that have been presented upon this subject. 



Perhaps, before I go on to the negotiations, I should draw atten- 

 tion now to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and then the 

 war and the peace in 1783. Now, say the United States this is a 

 very important step in their argument, one which wants a little 

 examination, and which, I think, on examination turns out to be fal- 

 lacious the right which we enjoyed as colonists or subjects we now 

 hold as citizens of an independent State. That is to say, a change 

 takes place in the character of the grantee ; but it is a long step to say 

 that, because the grantee has changed his character, it has any effect 

 whatever on the character or scope of the grant. Instead of being a 

 colonist he has become the citizen of a great Republic. But how does 

 that affect his right? He can enjoy as a citizen precisely the right 

 that he has enjoyed as a colonist. There is no necessary implication 

 that the right has altered its character because he has altered his. The 

 right is made permanent. That I agree. There is undoubted Lv a 

 distinct enlargement of the right ; but that is all. Instead of a liberty 

 enjoyed by a colonist on the shores of another colony, we have a lib- 

 erty permanently enjoyed by a citizen of an independent State upon 

 the same shores. There is the whole difference. But by what right 

 does the citizen of the independent State say: "This liberty is en- 

 larged, not by express agreement of the parties, but simply because I, 

 the grantee, am enlarged. I have become the citizen of an inde- 



