1940 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



Where did the right stand before the year 1908 ? 



What are you to adjudge the rights to be under the treaty of 1818? 



Under any arbitration proceeding, in any determination which 

 you may make under the Articles of this treaty following the <>nr> 

 submitting the question, in any determination which may be made 

 under the rules of procedure which you may frame and which may 

 possibly be accepted, or under the short form of procedure at The 

 Hague, provided for by article 4, what must be the foundation but an 

 ascertainment of the rights of the parties under the treaty of 1818, 

 and a procedure based upon the award which determines those rights ? 

 And, in determining what those rights are under the treaty of 1818, 

 of course you must proceed without any reference whatever to the 

 fact that, recognising the inequity of their own position, recognising 

 that that position would be revolting to the sense of justice of an 

 international Tribunal, Great Britain has recourse to the fact that 

 under this recent agreement a Tribunal may do what it would have 

 been unjust for Great Britain to do, that is to say, to pass herself 

 alone upon the rights in which another was equally interested, to be 

 the judge in her own case. 



Of course I need not argue that the assertion of such an uncon- 

 trolled right is in its legal effect wholly destructive of the limitation 

 which is stated in the contention of Great Britain under the first 

 question of the special agreement. 



How does Great Britain arrive at the conclusion that, while the 

 grant of 1818 limits the scope of sovereignty, excludes her from 

 legislation which modifies or affects our right, she alone is entitled 

 to be the judge as to what is desirable, appropriate, necessary, and 

 fair for her purposes to lead to a modification and restriction and 

 limitation of our right? She does it by appealing to her sovereignty. 

 It is not because there is any fairness as between two common owners 

 of a right, that one should be the judge of limitations and modifica- 

 tions to be imposed upon the right ; she does it by an appeal to her 

 sovereignty. It is because she is sovereign there. 



I shall deal hereafter with the question as to whether there is any 

 foundation for that appeal. I refer to it now, however, for the pur- 

 pose of pointing to the practical effect of the ground on which she 

 claims the right to decide. That is, the ground upon which she 

 claims that she had the right to decide prior to the making of this 

 special agreement, for the ninety years before the treaty of 1908 



came into existence. 



1175 What is the practical effect of Great Britain establishing her 

 right to determine alone herself as to what limitations may 

 and should be imposed upon our right, upon the ground of her sov- 

 ereignty? Why, it is that the right granted to us is subject to her 



