ARGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1765 



in the making ought jealously to guard. Let it protect its industries 

 if it likes. It will, perhaps, make a mess of the business when it is 

 trying to do it : but still more imperative is the duty upon it of pro- 

 tecting its race. 



I can imagine it being said : "Anyhow, these men only come in boats. 

 They cannot go on to the shore." Well, that is true. But we do not 

 necessarily want them, in boats. Anyhow, we do not want them put 

 into a position where the competition may be such as we cannot 

 stand on merely economic grounds. The Newfoundland fisherman 

 says : " We can compete against the United States inhabitant easily, 

 because the United States inhabitant is a prosperous person, with 

 many protected interests to which he can revert in search of a liveli- 

 hood. But when the United States inhabitant says, ' I am going to 

 run this business on capitalist grounds; I am not coming to fish, and 

 I cannot afford to get other inhabitants to come, in and fish, but I 

 can afford to build a ship, and man a ship with foreigners, and I will 

 send it and it shall come and sweep your waters, and undersell your 

 seamen, and deprive you of your livelihood,'" that is the position. 

 And it is no fanciful position. I am not seeking to test the justice 

 of a construction by extreme cases. I am putting a thing that might 

 f-rise at any day, even against the will of the United States; because 

 the United States must leave its citizens to exercise their treaty 

 rights .as they see fit. If once a declaration is made in favour of the 

 construction for which Mr. Root contends, why then, of course, the 

 United States Government washes its hands of the matter. Any 

 capitalist may organise this industry on any scale that he likes, with 

 the help of a protected market. He has got his market. The capi- 

 talist has got the key of Gloucester, Massachusetts, in his pocket. 

 He can keep the Newfoundland fishermen out of that, and he can 

 organise in any nation, and from any race that he pleases, the crews 

 for his vessels. He can organise a fishing industry which will de- 

 stroy Newfoundland. 



1068 These consequences are apparent to men of business, not 

 merely to lawyers, but they are obvious to diplomatists and to 

 men of affairs. These are the consequences that follow upon giving 

 to this treaty this unjust extension, upon treating this right which 

 was asked for on personal grounds, granted on personal grounds, as 

 being a grant to individuals of a certain State and no other. a.s now 

 found to confer on those individuals, those inhabitants of the United 

 States who choose to fish, a right contradictory and subversive of a 

 sovereign right of the Newfoundland State. 



I have heard men say it is a small matter. I venture humbly to 

 say it is nothing of the kind. Nothing is a small matter which 

 touches the independence of a State. Let a State make its mistakes 

 if it likes ; let it indulge in fights with its neighbour ; let Sir Robert 



