ARGUMENT OF ELIHU ROOT. 2001 



the treaty coast. The United States gets by the treaty granted to it 

 the right that its inhabitants shall for ever have this liberty, a right 

 of the highest national importance. The individual opportunity for 

 profit is but incidental, subordinate. The thing granted, the great 

 subject-matter of the treaty, what passed from one contracting party 

 to the other contracting party, is the right of the United States to 

 have this door of opportunity for ever open to its inhabitants; the 

 great national right, subserving the great national interest, which 

 led Great Britain, in this series of statutes before you, for a long 

 period of years, before 1818, before 1783, to pay bounties, to induce 

 its people to engage in this industry of fishing; so strictly national 

 that Great Britain, and France, and the United States all tax the 

 whole body of their inhabitants to raise the funds to induce citizens 

 to pursue the industry. It is the national interest of for ever having 

 open to the people of the nation the opportunity for profitable indus- 

 try and trade; the national interest for which sovereigns in all the 

 period of modern history have fitted out expeditions and made wars 

 and treaties of reciprocity, and have subsidized steam-ship lines; and 

 for which all over the world nations have been seeking to open doors 

 to the inhabitants of their countries, holding open the door of the 

 Orient, under common agreement with all of our countries, in order 

 that the inhabitants of our countries may have the opportunity to 

 enter into the profitable trade of the East. That is the national 

 interest that was subserved, and that is the national right that was 

 granted. It was also the right to a perpetual source of food supply 

 for the people of the United States, the right to a nursery for sea- 

 men to defend the coasts of the United States, very great national 

 interests that to-day are leading Great Britain to spend hundreds of 

 millions in the creation of the greatest navy of the world to protect 

 her food supply and to protect her coasts. That is what was granted 

 by the treaty to the nation with which the treaty was made. 



This was to a sovereign. And it follows necessarily, from the 

 nature of sovereingty, that the right was held by the sovereign with 

 the powers of a sovereign. It was its right. It was the right of 

 the United States. There is a perhaps apparent analogy to a trust 

 in form, but it is the trust of sovereignty. It is that great trust 

 under which all the powers of sovereignty are held, a trust which 

 differs from all municipal trusts in that there is no power to super- 

 vise or control it. 



My friend the Attorney-General criticised a gentleman who was 

 introduced here by Sir Robert Finlay as a very learned author, Mr. 

 Clauss. Sir Robert was specially solicitous to know that the Tri- 

 bunal had the book written by Mr. Clauss, and he quoted to the 

 Tribunal not mere statements of fact by Mr. Clauss, but an 

 1212 expression of opinion regarding the construction of instru- 



