ARGUMENT OF ELIHU ROOT. 1965 



whether they were on treaty coast or non-treaty coast. That is not 

 very definite, but that is my inference, from reading all this great 

 mass of documents. 



Now, pari passu with this practice of purchase which had been 

 continued time out of mind, and under which the local population 

 had come to conceive that they had rights against the substitution 

 of taking for purchasing, there ran a series of shore protection 

 statutes and executive acts. The first of that series to which I ask 

 your attention is the denial to American fishermen of any shore rights 

 whatever, under the treaty of 1818. They were denied back in 1839, 

 by that opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown in which, like the 

 Colossus of Rhodes, they fell off the headlands into the sea. They, 

 being asked whether the American fishermen had any right to use 

 the strand of the Magdalen Islands for the purpose of hauling their 

 nets, answered No, with the admirable logic involved in the propo- 

 sition that because the treaty granted American fishermen rights 

 to go ashore on the south coast of Newfoundland to dry and cure 

 their fish, therefore there was a necessary implication that they would 

 not draw their nets on the strand of the Magdalen Islands. That 

 opinion the Tribunal will find referred to many times afterwards in 

 the correspondence. The Halifax British counsel stated what was 

 considered to be the situation at p. 538 of the United States Counter- 

 Case Appendix the situation, I mean, as to American shore rights. 

 I read now from just below the middle of p. 538, where they say: 



" The convention of 1818 entitled United States citizens to fish 

 on the shores of the Magdalen Islands, but denied them the privilege 

 of landing there. Without such permission the practical use of the 

 inshore fisheries was impossible." 



I hope the Tribunal will observe the progressive effect of these dif- 

 ferent things which I am going to refer to, to the ultimate end of 

 crowding us out of any opportunity of any benefit whatever under 

 this treaty of 1818, the exercise of a right under which is the key to 

 the great bank fishery. They said, in the last paragraph on p. 538 : 



" In the case of the remaining portions of the sea-board of Canada, 

 the terms of the Convention of 1818 debarred United States citizens 

 from landing at any part for the pursuit of operations connected 

 with fishing. This privilege is essential to the successful prosecution 

 of both the inshore and deep-sea fisheries." 



Lord Salisbury, in a letter which^has been much referred to, of the 

 3rd April. 1880, refers to the same subject. I read from p. 684 of the 

 United States Case Appendix. That is in his correspondence with 

 Mr. Evarts, in which they got down to an understanding, or supposed 

 they got down to an understanding, as to what the rights of the par- 

 ties were under the treaty, with the exception of certain definite 



