ARGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1685 



SIR W. ROBSON: I understand that. In fact, Mr. Turner put it 

 very clearly. That is the footing. I am obliged to Mr. Justice Gray 

 for making it clear. I will just make the references clear. Mr. 

 Turner said, we claim participation, an equal participation, both by 

 voice and hand in making and enforcing these regulations. I can 

 read the references. 



JUDGE GRAY: I do not wish to disturb you. I think you recall 

 something of that kind to my mind. 



SIR W. ROBSON : What Mr. Turner said was on p. 1975. There are 

 several passages, but this is one of them : 



"A sovereign right to be exercised by the dominant state inde- 

 pendently of the grantor, insofar as the servitude requires such 

 action." 



JUDGE GRAY: Cannot that be understood as giving to the grantee, 

 so to speak, the dominant State, the right what is the language? 



SIR W. ROBSON: 



" A sovereign right to be exercised by the dominant state inde- 

 pendently of the grantor, insofar as the servitude requires such 

 action." 



JUDGE GRAY: The right of fishing which but for the grant they 

 would not have had, and that is a necessary limitation of the British 

 sovereignty, and negatives, that is, the British nation could not 

 not, by virtue of its sovereignty exclude a fishing boat of an 

 1019 inhabitant of the United States from fishing within the pre- 

 scribed waters, and therefore it gives up that much of its 

 sovereignty. That, I understand, to have been the written position 

 taken in the Case and Counter-Case. I am thinking of the Case and 

 Counter-Case, and not the printed Argument. 



SIR W. ROBSON : I think it goes a little further than that, though, 

 in order quite to develop the full extent to which it goes, one has to 

 look at one or two other parts of the Case. I quite agree, as Mr. 

 Justice Gray says, that all these passages which are now interpreted 

 as claiming a transfer of sovereignty, really might have been read in 

 the first instance as merely claiming a limitation of sovereignty, 

 because, as Mr. Justice Gray has put it there, that really amounts to 

 restriction, rather than transfer. That is to say, that the servient 

 State, having had a power to exclude all persons from its territory, 

 has said to one particular State, we will not exclude your subjects. 

 Now, that is a limitation upon the exercise of a sovereign right. 

 Thereafter the servient State must not exercise its sovereign right 

 so as to exclude those persons. But still, in my case, when they come 

 there they are subject to all other sovereign rights of the servient 

 State. That would be a mere limitation or restriction, in no sense a 

 transfer of the right. 



JUDGE GRAY : It is not a transfer of the sovereign right unless the 

 right to fish is a sovereign right. 



