1776 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



tion, no safeguard, there will be smuggling? Of course there will be. 

 What goods do you think you would get through the custom-house 

 paying revenue if there were no custom-house officers? Imagine the 

 boats arriving at a port at a foreign country with no one to inspect 

 the luggage or the things which are being brought into the country. 

 Of course not a single penny would be collected, except from persons 

 of such very rare and scrupulous and tender conscience as almost to 

 excite some kind of suspicion as to their general intellectual capacity, 

 if they made an account without any request. I think we may take 

 it for certain that there will be smuggling unless there are some 

 adequate, though of course they must always be reasonable, regula- 

 tions. That is all we ask for. We are not asking here to enforce 

 the full range of revenue laws in every case against fishing-vessels, 

 although the danger from fishing- vessels is greater. Yet, on the other 

 hand, we are not denying that there must in some cases be even a 

 modification and relaxation of the restrictions to meet their special 

 case. For instance, we would never allow an ordinary commercial 

 vessel to hover. It is very striking, as one goes through all this 

 legislation, to see that this offence of hovering, which of course from 

 the customs point of view is most dangerous a vessel coming along 

 into territorial waters and not proceeding straight to a destination 

 where she can be examined, but remaining outside where it is impos- 

 sible for anyone continually to keep her under observation you 

 cannot have a revenue cutter always looking at her, so there she is 

 hovering off the coast and at liberty to try to slip goods on shore 

 whenever she gets a favourable opportunity, in which probably 

 she will derive some assistance from the shore. So that the offence 

 of hovering, strictly forbidden to the commercial vessel, is one which 

 must be allowed to the fishing- vessel. So that makes some difference 

 in the regulation that we have to impose; but there is no difference 

 in respect of the need for regulation none. And under these circum- 

 stances, may we not fairly apply the principle laid down by Grot ins 

 and Vattel and Azuni and everybody else? So now this is a case in 

 which the exigencies of defence entitle the local jurisdiction to take 

 reasonable precautions in order to safeguard its own law. But is 

 there any reason why there should be any difference between a treaty 

 for a fishing right and a treaty for a trading right? That question 

 is answered by the observations I have already submitted, that if a 

 vessel with a trading right is compelled to submit to customs regu- 

 lations not specifically set out either in the treaty or in other docu- 

 ments (at least between the parties), a fortiori, the same obligation 

 should attach to vessels that come there to fish, subject, of course, 

 to any modifications which may be necessary of the kind I have 

 indicated. 



