ARGUMENT OF SIB WILLIAM EOBSON. 1807 



of what of course one could see by looking at the map, when I say 

 that most of these little creeks themselves give sufficient shelter. 



DR. DE SAVORNIN LOHMAN : But as to the purchasing of wood ? 



SIR W. ROBSON : That, of course, is a different purpose. I am 

 speaking, for the moment, of shelter only as to the purpose of shel- 

 ter only. They do not want to do more than enter the bays. Now, 

 then, they also want, sometimes, wood and water. For that purpose 

 they do not ask for liberty to land upon the open coast, because the 

 open coast is not convenient to them. They want something quite 

 different from the open coast. They want a place where they can 

 rest, and procure their wood and water. The bays, being more or 

 less harbours, are more likely to contain traces of previous naviga- 

 tors who have come there and put up their little sheds, and perhaps 

 left some shelter behind them. But, anyhow, they say : " What we 

 want is the bay. We may or may not want wood or water. We 

 may or may not want any other accommodations; but we want the 

 shelter of the headlands. And so we ask permission to enter that 

 bay;" and the treaty says: "You shall enter that bay." Nobody 

 cares about open coast in this connection at all. " You shall enter 

 the bay ; and when you have got there you shall shelter there. That is 

 to say, you shall lie up, under the lee of the headlands." That is the 

 nautical expression, meaning protected from the wind. " You may 

 lie there in peace, anchor and rest, but you shall not fish there." In 

 other words, bays being treated quite generally, here is an explicit 

 prohibition against fishing in a bay. 



DR. DE SAVORNIN LOHMAN : Oh, yes. 



SIR W. ROBSON : And the only question is : " What do you mean by 

 the word ' bay ' in that connection?" That is all. So that, if I can 

 bring it home to the minds of my Tribunal that the word " bay " is 

 used in its natural and unrestricted sense which, of couse, is another 

 part of my argument this clause means that the United States have 

 asked for the liberty, and Great Britain has granted the liberty, of 

 entering an ordinary geographical bay; and in giving them that 

 liberty. Great Britain has said to them : " You may land. Of course 

 that is one of your liberties. That is not the only liberty. You may 

 land; you may shelter; but you may not fish." I think that if I 

 now proceed to my argument, and develop this point as I go along, I 

 will perhaps have sufficiently answered the question for the moment. 



Then there is the second question: 



" Is it probable or not that the Americans, in renouncing the right 

 of fishing within three miles of any of the coasts, bays, harbours, and 

 creeks, intended to distinguish, for the first time, coasts and bays 

 and to abandon a right that always, in their opinion, had been com- 

 mon to all nations?" 



