1636 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



I do not think any authority is needed by the Tribunal for such a 

 proposition. 



Oppenheim says, at p. 559 : 



"it must be emphasized that interpretation of treaties is in the first 

 instance a matter of consent between the contracting parties. If they 

 choose a certain interpretation, no other has any basis. It is only 

 when they disagree that an interpretation based on scientific grounds 

 can ask a hearing; and these scientific grounds can be no other than 

 those provided by jurisprudence." 



I read that because it is not quite the same as most municipal laws. 

 I have very little knowledge of the laws of any country except my 

 own, but I can well imagine that municipal law might provide that 

 the construction of a contract was to turn simply upon the language 

 of the contract itself; that you would not be at liberty, as of course 

 in English law you would not be at liberty, to look at all these letters 

 and this correspondence. They would all be completely and abso- 

 lutely excluded, and we should have to try to derive what knowledge 

 we could of the intention of the parties (which is the aim of all 

 construction) from the contract itself, together with any custom 

 which might be supposed to form the basis of the contract. But Op- 

 penheim lays down as a rule in international law, and it seems an 

 extremely good rule, that after all, international tribunals, in deal- 

 ing with such documents, must first consider : How have the parties 

 interpreted the contract ? Because a great Tribunal like this is free, 

 as I have already said, from many of the technical rules that hamper 

 judicial bodies under national laws; and that-certainly is an equitable 

 and sound rule. No matter w r hat the contract says, under a technical 

 construction if the parties have agreed and themselves stated what it 

 is to be taken to mean, that is to be its meaning. Now, here you have 

 this contract construed by the very men that made it. That is why 

 I attach so much more importance to this date and this period than 

 I do to all the admissions that were made later, and which Mr. Ewart 

 dealt with so fully and so ably. 



I am quite certain that when the records of diplomacy come to be 

 considered in connection with this case they may be very contradic- 

 tory, because Great Britain, like other countries, with many relations 

 in different parts of the world, is apt, sometimes, to take different 

 views according to different departments, and the different depart- 

 ments take different views according to different changes of circum- 

 stances. You do not get very much consistency in the diplomacy of 

 a great Empire. So that, as far as admissions are concerned, they are 

 useful, but they are much less important than that which amounts, 

 in the words of Oppenheim, to a construction put by the parties on 

 their own documents. And, Mr. Gallntin. Mr. Rush, and Mr. Adams, 

 the three persons who made the treaty under consideration, are also 



