ARGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1647 



"common fishery," a public fishery. It cannot be suggested, I sup- 

 pose, that the fishery on the coast of Newfoundland was a fishery 

 described, as between England and the United States, as a " common 

 fishery." If so, I do not see how it advances the United States argu- 

 ment. Of course, call it that if you like; to give it a name does not 

 endow the United States with any sovereign powers over it. There is 

 no question in a " common fishery " of ownership or sovereignty, 

 except the general sovereignty over the whole territory which runs 

 out to the fishery in the open sea or in tidal waters. So, it is not ap- 

 plicable as a meaning of the words " in common with British sub- 

 jects." Then there is the other phrase " common of fishery," this 

 phrase relating entirely to the grant of a private fishing right where 

 the owner of the fishery has granted to one or more persons the use 

 in common with himself. That is called, in technical English lan- 

 guage, a " common of fishery." You might have a " common of 

 pasture " ; you might have various kinds of " common," not of fishery 

 alone, and nobody in this correspondence has called this right a 

 " common of fishery." If Mr. Adams had written to Lord Bathurst, 

 and said : " Will you please to give us a " common fishery " ? Lord 

 Bathurst would have wondered what on earth he was talking about. 

 Such an expression would have been wholly inapplicable to a liberty 

 granted as between two independent States. So that no technical 

 expression that I know of in the English municipal law in which 

 the word " common " occurs in connection with the grant of a fishery 

 or fishing is appropriate or may be applied to those words of the 

 treaty. They are not technical words at all. It is not a grant of a 

 " common fishery " ; it is not a 1 grant of a " common of fishery." The 

 King does not propose to fish " in common " with the President of 

 the United States. That is purely a private right. Words of a 

 technical character relate solely to private rights and could not be 

 transferred to a document of this kind between such high contracting 

 parties. 



I have read with some difficulty and embarrassment the pleadings 

 of the United States which suggest that the words " in common " 

 have some technical meaning. They have none, and I think the 

 United States would have done better to have stuck to its contention 

 that it has to strike them out altogether as being perfectly 

 996 useless, or as having application only to a purpose which no- 

 body could suggest as serious. The words therefore have no 

 such technical application. 



But I will just follow this a little farther, and it will not take long 

 to look at the correspondence between the parties where the same words 

 are used to show that they are used in the ordinary untechnical sense. 

 For instance, take the very significant use of them in the letter from 



