ARGUMENT OF ELIHU ROOT. 2039 



Council of 1819 for the execution of the treaty of 1818, expressly 

 ordering her people in Newfoundland not to interrupt the exercise of 

 the treaty right by Americans. There is there on the part of France 

 no right whatever except the right granted in the same words as the 

 grant to the United States of 1783 and 1818, with a promise on the 

 part of the King of Great Britain to make that right effective by 

 prohibiting his subjects from interrupting the exercise by their 

 competition. 



They were quite well understood to be the same rights. I find, on 

 p. 229 of the Appendix to the Counter-Case of the United States, that 

 the Governor of Newfoundland, writing to Sir John Pakington, says, 

 in the fourth paragraph : 



" The very terms of the Declaration in question whilst forbidding 

 the English fishermen to interrupt by their competition, or to injure 

 the Stages, etc., of the French, recognise their presence, and the whole 

 question would appear to be settled by the concession on the part of 

 our Government to the citizens of the United States in the treaty of 

 1818, of the same rights which had been conceded to the French in 

 that of 1783." 



The Newfoundland Legislature, in resolutions adopted in 1876, ap- 

 pearing on p. 276 and following pages of the United States Counter- 

 Case Appendix, said, in the paragraph which begins towards the 

 bottom of p. 277 : 



"That the rights of fishing involved in the absurd claims of an 

 exclusive fishery by the French are not limited to the residents of 



Newfoundland; they are the rights of the other provinces of 

 1234 British North America, and also those of the United States, to 



the latter granted them under their Treaty with Great Britain 

 in the year 1818. England could not and would not have granted to 

 the United States that which she had no right to grant, and much less 

 would she deprive the inhabitants of the soil of rights she had granted 

 to non-residents and to aliens." 



This French right was well understood to be the same as the 

 American right before the exigencies of the situation led to refine- 

 ment and subtlety, before lawyers began to argue about it and try 

 to find fine distinctions between the two. Great Britain had con- 

 ceded this right, expressed in the treaty of 1783, which was part of 

 the same transaction with the American treaty of 1783, and relating 

 to the same coast of Newfoundland, with confessedly no thought 

 of regulation on the part of Great Britain, confessedly no idea that 

 there was any possible right of regulation on the part of Great 

 Britain, and these negotiators, knowing it all, proved by the record 

 to have discussed it in their negotiations, to have discussed the whole 

 subject of the fisheries, including the French rights, going on and 

 repeating the language of the treaty of 1763, in making the grant 



