1774 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



there were fortifications that they required to keep unobserved. 

 1073 It would be quite within the territorial power to say : " You 

 must take a longer route because we do not desire you to make 

 observations of this or that part of the coast." All these are instances 

 in which rights granted either by international law and founded 

 upon a universal comity, or upon what, after all, is no stronger when 

 once the law is well established, a treaty or convention, are neverthe- 

 less to be taken to be impliedly subject to those reasonable burdens. 

 Of course, in dealing with international law in relation to treaties a 

 subject with which I have already dealt at such length I admitted 

 that international law, when well established and clearly proved, like 

 municipal law, may be taken as the basis of a contract, and may be 

 read into a contract on those matters as to which the contract is 

 silent, because, no doubt, the parties were contracting with knowl- 

 edge of the law. And one may say also that a vessel that starts out 

 to navigate on the high seas, and passes through territorial waters, 

 knows that in such waters, and still more in any ports that it may 

 visit for purposes of distress, all nations of the world claim the right 

 to exact some moderate sum in respect of the conveniences they 

 render by lighthouses or buoys, or the charges they are put to by way 

 of special guardianship. And, equally, they are subject to the obli- 

 gation, it may be, of being deviated from their course in order that a 

 nation may take proper safeguards with regard to its defences; that 

 is, to the defence either of its territory or of its laws its reasonable 

 and well-known laws, such as fiscal laws are. And therefore there is 

 here an obligation which is universal in its character, which applies 

 in the absence of treaties, and applies also to treaties unless treaties 

 are expressly inconsistent with the obligation. Of course, parties 

 may exclude such obligations, as they may exclude any other. And 

 the fundamental principle which I venture to submit to the Tribunal 

 in regard to these customs regulations and, in the same measure, to 

 light dues (but in light dues, of course, you have another considera- 

 tion equally potent) is: Every nation must be taken to have the 

 right to defend itself in respect of its vital interests whenever it is 

 making a treaty or granting an indulgence or conferring a liberty 

 upon another nation in relation to its territory. That is putting it 

 broadly, but of course I am not considering each word of the propo- 

 sition that I am laying down, but putting it broadly ; that, I 'think, 

 makes clear the principle for which I contend, and which applies to 

 both Questions 3 and 4. 



Take, for instance, the question of smuggling. Here we have got 

 a case which, like many contracts, has expressly provided for one 

 particular danger, and yet has left another danger of exactly the 

 same sort to mere implication. For instance, this contract, at the 

 end of article 1, after it gives the right of entry for purposes of wood 



