ARGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1847 



knew that you could scarcely keep them from landing, if they wanted 

 to land there, in a sheltered place sometimes, of course, the shelter 

 is less than at other places ; there is a great deal of difference between 

 the shelter in St. George's Bay and the shelter, say, in the Bay of 

 Islands. But there is a good deal of shelter in St. George's Bay. 

 You see here on the map the way in which, from the north-east, the 

 south and the south-east you have absolute shelter in St. George's 

 Bay, and shelter from many winds, and probably very severe winds, 

 in that part of the world. So everybody not merely Great Britain, 

 but the United States and everybody else said : " Bays must be 

 separately treated, both for general territorial purposes, and of course 

 for fishing purposes." Fishing purposes followed general territorial 

 purposes. Once you said : " That bay is my territory ; " the moment 

 you have established its territorially, then you have a right to for- 

 bid foreigners to fish in it. So that, of course, the territorial right 

 carried the fishing right. And everybody said : " We must have 

 these bays territorially." Who said so? I pointed out on Friday 

 afternoon : First of all, Great Britain and France sit down together 

 and say so, in 1686. Later on, the United States and France sit 

 down together and say so, in 1778 four years before this. Four 

 years before this all the three powers had agreed that their bays 

 should be territorial. What is the effect of that on the fishing? 

 Without expressly saying a word about fishing, the effect of it is 

 that each nation assumes the right to keep its own bays to itself and 

 keep others out. And. therefore, when you come down to the treaty 



of 1782, here, the preliminary article and they are dealing, 

 1117 then, with the right they want to get over all our dominions 



the negotiators say : " We want the bays, as they are commonly 

 understood. We do not want to have any doubt upon the subject. 

 We will have the words in." And therefore the} 7 put them in, out 

 of greater caution. Well, now, they have got them in. Did they 

 get anything by putting the words there? Whose bays were they? 

 That is the point. Because I am going to establish, and am going 

 to give some time to the answer to the question put to me by Dr. 

 Lohman. as to whether I contend that in 1818 they renounced any- 

 thing which they did not need to have renounced. I say in 1818 

 they renounced nothing that they did not get in 1783. In 1783 Great 

 Britain said to them : " You shall fish along our coasts, and you 

 shall fish within our bays.'' And the United States knew what that 

 meant. They knew that it meant : " We will give you liberty to 

 enter our territorial waters, not only those territorial waters which 

 are 9 miles or 3 miles all the way around the coast, but those other 

 territorial waters which do not depend on a coast-line at all, but 

 which are territorial waters because they are within a bay. We will 

 give you liberty to fish there." That is what the United States got 



