ABGTJMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBS01T. 1735 



suggestion that I know of, no trace that I know of, of any evidence 

 that you might take foreigners. What would have happened if there 

 had been any such right? Why, take France, for instance. The 

 Tribunal may remember what happened in the French wars what 

 had just happened before this treaty was made. I forget the exact 

 date when war was declared between France and England, as a con- 

 sequence of the events of 1789, but I remember that, I think it was 

 in 1793, it was reported to the French National Assembly that the 

 French flag flew nowhere on the high seas except over her fleet and 

 her privateers. The mercantile marine of France was driven off the 

 seas. That was what I referred to yesterday as the first step in that 

 great battle between land and sea from the English point of view 

 one would say between Napoleon and Pitt. And so the French 

 wanted to train their men. They could do it on the west coast of 

 Newfoundland, if they could get there when war was going on. If 

 they could have done it by sending their men to serve under the 

 American flag, and under American masters, they being in close 

 amity and friendship with America at the time, of course they would 

 have done it ; and we should have had that fishery crowded with men 

 learning to become good seamen. 



The Tribunal will remember again, though some of those statutes 

 I have not the reference to they are probably fresh in the memory 

 of the Tribunal, as they are in mine among the regulations imposed 

 on British seamen was the requirement that they must take so many 

 green men " green men " meaning young boys, apprentices. As 

 part of the price that they were to pay for the privilege of fishing 

 in Newfoundland, in that close preserve of the British Crown, they 

 were to train so many seamen. Just think of making these provisions 

 and then allowing foreigners to inundate the territory under Amer- 

 ican or other flags ! It would never have been permitted and could 

 not have been tolerated. 



In order to see how far such an assertion as that about the for- 

 eigners is likely to be true one has only to look at the historic condi- 

 tions of the time a most interesting and critical time in Europe, 

 well known, of course, to every nation whose existence was imper- 

 illed by the triumphant arms of France for so many years; but to 

 us those things which are here being discussed as if they were inter- 

 esting legal problems were life and death at that time. I venture, 

 therefore, to say that the statement which the United States Case 

 and pleadings have impressed upon the minds of the Tribunal as a 

 fact is an assertion which has no evidence whatever to support it. 

 We were carefully nursing every inch of our teritory with a view 

 to its use in a great national struggle, and our critical point the 

 point to which our enemy was directing his attention and to which 

 we were directing ours was the maintenance of our seamen. And 



