1886 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



over such a person "; or you may say: " Such and such a country is 

 one of the dominions of the King." Of course, when you are using it 

 in the purely political sense, implying control, it has no plural at all. 

 Ton cannot say : " I have control over this State, and I have ' controls ' 

 over two States." That will not make English. So that when you 

 use the word in the plural, and speak of " dominions," you are using 

 the word in its geographical sense; you are using the word as saying: 

 " We will give the liberty to fish on the coast of that one of the 

 King's dominions called Newfoundland " ; or, you may say : " We 

 will give liberty to fish upon all the King's dominions." It is only 

 a compendious way of summing up a number of places with geo- 

 graphical names. It does not in the least degree import any special 

 or peculiar or limited kind of sovereignty over territorial water, which 

 is to be limited by a 3-mile boundary, or anything of that sort at all. 

 The word as it is used is only appropriate in its geographical sense. 

 The political sense of the word "dominion" is really only to bet 

 inferred at all when the word is used, as I have said, in the singular. 

 I had better, perhaps, take the clause itself, in the treaty of 1783 

 first, because there the words occur: 



"The Inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty to take 

 fish on the coasts, bays and creeks of all other of His Britannic 

 Majesty's dominions in America." 



Now, Mr. Warren, I think, does not contend that the restricted 

 meaning he puts on the word " dominions " in the treaty of 

 1141 1818, meaning dominions limited strictly by the 3-mile limit, 

 applies to the treaty of 1783. He can not contend that ; because 

 in 1783 there was no 3-mile limit at all. The parties could not be 

 taken, in 1783, to have been contracting with reference to this imagi- 

 nary kind of bay, the 6-mile bay, because they had not even got the 

 basis for it in a 3-mile limit. And when one sees how the word 

 " bays " is used there, it is used in its most general sense, " rnn-t-. bays 

 and creeks"; and then, afterwards, we come to the " unsettled bays, 

 harbors and creeks." Again, there is no limitation on the word 

 " bays," except merely in relation to the degree of settlement. How 

 can anybody read into that clause any kind of limitation on bay? 

 They cannot read any sort of limitation into it from international law, 

 because international law had not got so far at that time. The only 

 limitation they can read into it is that which is there expressed the 

 degree of settlement to which the particular bays have been sub- 

 jected. Therefore I take it that we are entitled to assume that, in 

 1783, Mr. Warren's argument would not apply at all. I have dealt 

 already with the authorities which show that full dominion was 

 claimed over the ordinary geographical bay. 



Then what happens between then and 1818. to make any difference? 

 The only thing that can be suggested is that in 180G there were cer- 



