ARGUMENT OF SIB WILLIAM ROBSON. 1809 



The next question is : 



" Is it admissible or not to read the words of the renunciatory 

 clause ' any of the coasts, bays, creeks or harbours ' as designating the 

 coast in general, by enumerating its component parts in the same 

 sense and in the same manner as is done in the treaty of 1783 ? " 



Well, in the treaty of 1783 you are giving, and you are giving all, 

 without distinction. You are giving the coast and the bays, and the 

 very fact that you should mention them in 1783 shows that, if only 

 by habit, the diplomatists of the period did always, when they were 

 talking about jurisdiction on coast, specify bays that is, they thought 

 of them. Even though they were uselessly inserted, they were in- 

 serted because it was their habit always to deal with bays as a sep- 

 arate class ; and they are distinguished even there, although you have 

 liberty to fish in 1783 on every part of the coast of Newfoundland, 

 and on all the coasts which British fishermen had used. In spite of 

 that it is thought necessary to add to " coasts " the word " bays." 

 And even then a distinction is made between one kind of bay and 

 another that is to say, between the settled bay and the unsettled 

 bay. But no distinction mark it is made between the bay which 

 is territorial and the bay which is non-territorial, because there was 

 no such distinction; they were all territorial. Every nation re- 

 garded its bays as being within the body of that nation itself, and no 

 nation more strongly than the United States. So that, so far from 

 renouncing something in 1818 which they had always regarded as 

 being a common right, they were dealing with bays on the footing 

 which again and again they had asserted as being a footing common 

 to both England and themselves, namely, territorially within their 

 boundary. 



Then, in the same way, in 1818, again, in the most explicit way, 

 and in the governing document, after all the negotiators had done 

 their work, after all the letters had been written, and the result 

 comes to be embodied in a contract, what do they do ? Do they treat 

 bays as part of the coast? No. Or do they ignore bays? Because 

 all that they had to do, on the footing suggested by the United States, 

 was for the gentlemen who were making the renunciation to say: 

 " We renounce the coasts. We will not fish within 3 miles of the 

 coast of His Majesty's dominions." Why did they not say that? 

 If the United States are right that is all they need have said. They 



did not say it. They said: "We will not go within 3 marine 

 1094 miles of the coasts, and we will not go within 3 marine miles 



of the bay " not of the coast of the bay ; not at all ; but, 

 " We will not go within 3 marine miles of the entrance of the bay." 

 And then, later on, they say that, "After all, we may want to go 

 into the bay, not merely to land landing is one of the things we 

 want, but not the only thing we may want to go into it and rest 



