ARGUMENT OP ELIHU BOOT. 2003 



suppose, which is carried into the Attorney-General's definition by 

 the word " supreme.'' That is the characteristic essential quality 

 of the artificial person to which this grant is made, the nation, the 

 United State-. And the United States holds this great national 

 right concerning a subject-matter of special interest to all sovereigns 

 under the powers of sovereignty, which involve no accountability to 

 any power on earth. It follows, necessarily, that this right of the 

 United States, that its inhabitants shall have the liberty to take fish 

 is a right which the United States can, so far as it and its inhabitants 

 are concerned, deal with at its will.. It can impose upon its inhabi- 

 tants conditions to the exercise of the liberty that they may have; 

 it may say to them, " You shall exercise that liberty only upon com- 

 plying with such and such conditions." It may exclude part of them 

 from it. It may include part of them in it. It may say, " You shall 

 exercise it only at such times, and not at other times." It may say 

 to them, " You shall exercise it only in such ways, and not in other 

 ways." That is necessarily the result of this national right being 

 granted to this sovereign, to be held under the trust of sovereignty, 

 without accountability, for the benefit of its inhabitants. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK: Is there not another necessary result 

 to protect them in the exercise of the right ? 



SENATOR BOOT: Only as every sovereign has a right to protect all 

 its citizens in the exercise of their rights. But that is not a right of 

 the treaty. It is not a right under the treaty. Wherever a citizen of 

 Great Britain or of France, or of the United States, may go he is en- 

 titled to have the protection of his government for his rights. What- 

 ever national right may exist, the nation has internationally the right 

 to protect it, but not a right derived from a treaty a right inherent 

 in the independence of nations. When a British ship sails the ocean 

 and is arrested, is attacked, the power of Great Britain can be used 

 to protect it. It needs no treaty to give that power; the protection 

 of it may be war, not the exercise of a treaty right. When 

 1213 France gave notice to Great Britain, in the correspondence that 

 is here, and that Mr. Turner referred to, that she proposed to 

 enforce her rights on the treaty coast rather a peremptory corre- 

 spondence, the Tribunal will remember and Great Britain answered 

 back that she proposed to enforce hers, that did not mean the exercise 

 of treaty rights. It meant war. When Mr. Evarts had this corre- 

 spondence here with Lord Granville about the question as to whether 

 we would be compelled to send ships of war to the treaty coast, that 

 did not mean the exercise of a treaty right. It meant war. The 

 treaty right, and the full extent of the sovereign right that comes to 

 the United States under the treaty, is to deal with its own inhabitants. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK: The power to regulate its own in- 

 habitants. 



