ARGUMENT OP SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1649 



secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the United 

 States and of erecting temporary houses,' " &c. 



You have the same words there as between the Indians and the 

 inhabitants of the United States. Then the learned Judge goes on to 

 say: 



" It is obvious, however, from the language above quoted, that the 

 treaty secures to the Indians only an equality of rights and privileges 

 in the matter of fishing, whaling, and sealing. The guaranty is of 

 rights in common with all citizens of the United States, and certainly 

 such treaty stipulations give no support to a claim for peculiar or 

 superior rights or privileges denied to citizens of the country in 

 general." 



I only mention that because it is an illustration of the use of the 

 words, showing that they are being construed according to their 

 ordinary and popular sense. 



Mr. Turner said that the words were very readily accepted by the 

 American Plenipotentiaries, so readily accepted that they must have 

 been harmless or the American Plenipotentiaries would not have 

 taken them without demur. Mr. Turner is right, they were accepted 

 at once; brought forward, I believe, almost at the last conference and 

 without the slightest observation they were accepted. Why? Be- 

 cause they exactly expressed everybody's intention. Before I came to 

 deal with these words, I thought it right to put before the Tribunal 

 the correspondence of the parties to show that from the first nobody 

 doubted that they were to come under the sovereignty or the jurisdic- 

 tion of Great Britain, and therefore when words are brought forward 

 which indicate that effect to them the United States take them with- 

 out demur, without objection and without observation. We have 

 997 got, therefore, the plain words, and I have to make this further 

 observation that, in order to give any effect to the contention of 

 the United States, you have to re-write the first clause of this treaty 

 altogether; in fact, I hope before I am finally done with the argu- 

 ment, to show that you have pretty well to re- write the whole of the 

 article in order to give effect to the contention of the United States in 

 each of the seven questions submitted to the Tribunal. I have now 

 reached the end of the note that I have made on this part of the case. 

 I shall next deal with servitudes, but perhaps it would not be incon- 

 venient if I should not begin with servitudes until to-morrow. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK : Would a grant of fishing rights to two 

 persons, to be enjoyed as to one subject to regulation, and as to the 

 other without regulation, be called a fishery right enjoyed in common 

 by both of the grantees? 



SIR W. ROBSON : Certainly not. I speak without any hesitation 

 whatever in saying that, as a matter of English law a right granted 

 under such inequality of conditions could not possibly be called a 

 right in common. It might be a fishery in common in the sense that 



