ARGUMENT OF SIB WILLIAM EOBSON. 1717 



contract to which Mr. Justice Gray was good enough to direct my 

 view. 



THE PRESIDENT : Please, Mr. Attorney-General, when did the words 

 "in common with British subjects" first come in? 



SIR W. ROBSON : I think almost in the last protocol. 



THE PRESIDENT : And the word " forever " ? 



SIR W. ROBSON : I think that came in early. That of course was 

 a great subject of conflict. There seems, curiously, to have been a 

 controversy about the alleged permanence of the right, but undoubt- 

 edly it played a very great part between the negotiators. They were 

 afraid that this right of theirs, the right to fish, which of course was 

 not merely a right upon these little scraps of coasts, but which was 

 then the far greater right of fishing on the common sea they were 

 afraid that the whole question of the fishery itself on the Banks, and 

 the inshore fisheries, might be opened up if there was any future war 

 between Great Britain and the United States. Of course, at that 

 time, when the world was in so perturbed a state, there was always a 

 danger of war, and especially, one is bound to admit, on the part of 

 every State a danger of war with Great Britain who was fighting, 

 not merely for its own existence, but for the dominion of the seas, 

 upon which, according to its view, its existence then depended. And 

 so the United States now said : If we are going to have this fishing 

 right we want to make sure it is going to be ours always. We, on 

 the other hand, Great Britain, said: No, you cannot have a liberty 

 eternally ; the fact that you have it given in those terms means that 

 it is a determinable privilege. 



THE PRESIDENT: Did Great Britain accede to the theory of per- 

 petuity of this treaty before the seventh conference? 



SIR W. ROBSON : No. It acceded to the word " forever " before the 

 seventh conference. No, perhaps I am wrong. 



THE PRESIDENT : I think not. The word " forever," I believe, ap- 

 pears first in the seventh conference, but the idea of perpetuity, of 

 course, was contended for on the part of the United States from the 

 beginning, but they expressed it otherwise. They expressed it in 

 such words as " permanent," " continuing," but the word " forever,'* I 

 believe, came in only at the seventh conference. 



SIR W. ROBSON : It came in at the third conference, I think, Sir. 

 United States Case Appendix, p. 310. That is the third conference. 



THE PRESIDENT : And were they accepted by Great Britain ? 



SIR W. ROBSON. I think not at first. There was another draft and 



they missed those words out. 



1039 THE PRESIDENT: And then there is another draft. The 

 words are not in the fifth conference. They seem to have been 

 accepted only in the seventh conference. 



SIR W. ROBSON : Yes. 



