ARGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1659 



quietly in their studies speculating upon everything that this con- 

 cept may import, while the Lord Bathursts and the Mr. Adamses, 

 and the Mr. Monroes are out in the busy world, not studying inter- 

 national law, but fighting for the liberty of their States, or even the 

 empire and dominion of their States. Let us see what these men, 

 engaged in the active affairs of life, know about this concept. I have 

 had, with the assistance of my industrious and learned friends, this 

 record searched for instances in which the word " servitude '' occurs 

 anywhere in correspondence, treaties, and so on, and in the whole of 

 these Appendices I have found three instances of the word occurring. 

 The first instance has been drawn to the attention of the Tribunal. 

 It was in a letter by Mr. Gallatin after the negotiations for the treaty 

 of 1818 had been concluded and he was writing giving an account to 

 his colleagues at home of the progress and result of these negotia- 

 tions writing a letter in a spirit which was intended to vindicate 

 his own sagacity, making little of the concessions he had made and 

 much of those that he had received, not an unnatural spirit, no doubt, 

 for him to adopt. And he says: We had a great deal of difficulty 

 over our fishing rights; they were very obnoxious to Great Britain. 

 They were construed he did not say they were construed by Great 

 Britain but he said they were construed as being a servitude, or 

 what the French called a servitude. He did not say that the British 

 called it a servitude, but still the sentence reads as if it might be 

 that the English considered it a servitude. That is the only men- 

 tion of the word in all the negotiations that preceded the forming of 

 the treaty, or that immediate!} 7 followed, and it is not a mention of 

 the word as between the parties. It is not an observation addressed 

 by Mr. Gallatin to the English negotiators, or to an American col- 

 league, and he does not ascribe the use of the word to an Eng- 

 1003 lishman at all. But, I am not unwilling to admit, at all events 

 hypothetically, for the purpose of the argument, that it is just 

 possible that some idea of the kind may have been present to the 

 minds of some of the negotiators. It does not affect my argument 

 to admit it because I see a curious trace of some difficulty of the sort 

 in the correspondence. There is a letter of Lord Castlereagh which 

 I had noted to have read yesterday, but which slipped my memory 

 at which I am surprised in myself. I forgot it, but really it was of 

 more value than much else that I did quote. At p. 177 of the British 

 Counter-Case Appendix there is a letter from Lord Castlereagh to 

 Mr. Bagot, dated the 22nd March, 1817. I need not read the early 

 paragraphs of the letter, though they have a slight bearing upon it, 

 but just the important paragraph, which is the second paragraph 

 from the top of p. 177 : 



"Undoubtedly no negotiation could be entertained which might, 

 in its form, seem to imply any doubt on the part of this Government 



