ARGUMENT OP ELIHU ROOT. 2017 



that the inhabitants of the United States are to have in common ; it is 

 not that it is to be exercised in common with British subjects. As 

 Chief Justice Fitzpatrick observed yesterday in regard to the terms 

 of the treaty of 1783, words were not used here loosely or carelessly. 

 The men who drafted and settled this knew what they meant by the 

 words that they used, and, of course, this right of the United States 

 had been the subject of very careful and critical analysis. The 



United States was being compelled to surrender a large part 

 1221 of its right, and they, of course, used words with the greatest 



care for the purpose of securing a definite, and perpetual, and 

 effective right. It was not by mere accident that they used the words 

 " the inhabitants of the said United States shall have, forever, in 

 common with the subjects of His Britannic Majesty, the liberty to 

 take fish of every kind." 



The natural inference from the fact that two nations have rights 



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in common is not that one of them shall have entire control of both 

 rights and shall determine when it is desirable for the common inter- 

 est, that f he rights shall be limited or modified. That is not the 

 natural inference. The natural inference from the legal effect of the 

 fact that two nations have common rights is that they shall have a 

 common voice in modifying or changing the rights, and the real 

 ground upon which the claim is made for an exclusive right in Great 

 Britain to say what modifications shall be made in both of these 

 common rights is not that the rights are common, but it is that it is 

 her soil, her territory. The inference is not aided or added to in the 

 f-lightest degree by the fact that the rights are in common : the infer- 

 ence from the fact that the rights are in common is all the other way. 



I think I have already disposed of the idea that there is to be any 

 inference, any implication, from the fact that it is within British 

 territory, that British sovereignty controls the exercise of the right. 

 I think I have disposed of that, and that is the sole ground for the 

 contention that Great Britain can control the common right. The 

 fact that the right is common adds nothing whatever to it. 



But, let us examine a little further this idea, that the common 

 quality of the rights of the two nations justifies one of them in con- 

 trolling both. They are equal, and they are held by two equal inde- 

 pendent sovereign States. The rights of one are of as great sanctity 

 and dignity as the rights of the other. Great Britain is the sole judge 

 of the time when, the places where, and the manner in which her 

 rights shall be exercised. There is no equality whatever in having the 

 subjects of Great Britain exercise their common right, or, to put it in 

 the other form, in having Great Britain exercise her common right 

 when she chooses, where she chooses, and as she chooses, and having 

 the United States exercise her equal common right, not where and 



