2020 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



Britain, under that clause of the treaty, has the right to have her 

 subjects exercise the liberty, and the United States acquires the right 

 to have her subjects exercise the liberty, and that liberty is a liberty 

 that they are to have for ever in common. 



THE PRESIDENT: The Court will adjourn until a quarter-past two. 



[Thereupon, at 12.15 o'clock, the Tribunal took a recess until 2.15 

 p. m.] 



1223 AFTERNOON SESSION, FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1910, 2.15 P. M. 



THE PRESIDENT : Will you kindly continue, Mr. Senator Root. 



SENATOR ROOT: It follows from the nature of the right that was 

 granted to the United States, quite independently of the question 

 whether the grant to the United States must be treated as a convey- 

 ance by reason of the peremptory requirement of perpetual existence 

 imported in the word " forever," and from the fact that this grant 

 was to the United States, that when the inhabitants of the United 

 States go upon the treaty coast for the purpose of exercising the 

 liberty that they have, they go there by virtue of the authority which 

 they derive from their own government, not by virtue of an author- 

 ity derived by them from the British Government, availing them- 

 selves of a right which their country has internationally as against 

 the general sovereign of the territory, by virtue of the grant which 

 that general sovereign has made to their sovereign. The right which 

 they exercise is a right that is therefore beyond the competency of 

 the general sovereign of the territory that is to say, Great Britain 

 to destroy or to impair or to change. It is a right which it is compe- 

 tent only for their own government to destroy or to impair or to 

 change. That is equivalent to saying, in another form, that the right 

 which they exercise is a right that they hold under their sovereign, 

 and which that sovereign has acquired from Great Britain. 



Under the way in which the exercise of this right has been treated 

 by Britain, and in which it is the claim of Great Britain to be enti- 

 tled to treat it, the American fishermen constitute a separate class 

 by themselves, who, although Great Britain claims them to be sub- 

 ject to all her rights of municipal legislation, because the right that 

 they have is a right in common, nevertheless are excluded from the 

 real common exercise of the right. I hope I make it plain. It is 

 that when the inhabitants of the United States go upon the treaty 

 coast and exercise the liberty that is the subject of this grant to 

 their country, under the view which Great Britain takes of the force 

 of the words " in common." of the fact that the liberty is in common, 

 they are treated as being a special class by themselves, not mingling 

 with the population as in case of ordinary trade and travel rights, not 

 really exercising rights in common, but exercising a special kind of 

 right as a separate class, denied real rights of exercise in common ; 



