ARGUMENT OF ELIHU BOOT. 2027 



enjoyment of the rights is practically necessarily subordinate to 

 municipal regulation, because the enjoyment is through the instru- 

 mentality of private persons. When one comes to reside, he must 

 get a place to reside. He gets a private title, he buys a house or 

 hires a house; he secures a room in a hotel, and what he gets is the 

 private title, and that of course is a title subordinate to all the laws 

 and regulations of the country. When he trades he makes con- 

 tracts, and the person with whom he makes the contract is of 

 1227 course subordinate, and the making of the contract must be 

 in accordance with the laws of the country within which the 

 trading is done. So that practically the substantial enjoyment of 

 rights of trade and travel is necessarily subordinate to laws and 

 regulations. And there is no really practical subject-matter upon 

 which the question that we are considering can arise. The other 

 thing to be said is that now these treaties are merely a recognition 

 of an existing rule and right which is accorded without treaty to 

 all mankind. We none of us produced any passports coming here. 

 We go at large through the civilised world, and except it be some 

 particular country which has a special principle of exclusion for some 

 class, and which wishes always to scrutinise for the purpose of deter- 

 mining whether we belong to that class, we are exercising the general 

 right of modern civilisation, which is recognised generally as being 

 for the benefit of all nations, and which no nation can afford to deny, 

 because the principle of commercial intercourse has taken the place 

 of the principle of isolation. And, really, putting such a right into 

 a treaty now is nothing more than practically a recognition of the 

 fact, a formal recognition of the fact, that the two countries are on 

 terms of peace and amity, which the inhabitants may freely enjoy, 

 and that there is no barrier to their exercise of the general rights 

 which obtain in all civilised countries. Such a treaty does serve, 

 perhaps I should say in addition, to negative special grounds of 

 exclusion which sometimes exist. For instance, both the United 

 States and Canada, while extending the freest possible hospitality 

 to travel and residence and trade on the part of all the people of the 

 earth, do make an exception based upon a special ground regarding 

 the coolies, the labourers from the Orient; and that is based upon a 

 special ground which is recognised by the Oriental nations. It is 

 that immigration en masse, which amounts to peaceful invasion of a 

 country by a great body of people who would take possession of, and 

 occupy a portion of the territory to the exclusion of the natives, is 

 different in kind from the exercise of ordinary travel and trade 

 rights ; and upon that principle is recognised a specific right of exclu- 

 sion not inconsistent with the according of the general rights of 

 trade and travel. But as that custom of the civilised world which 

 gradually crystallises into the law of nations grows, more and more, 



