ARGUMENT OF ELTHU ROOT. 2075 



British Case Appendix a formal report by the British negotiators 

 to Lord Castlereagh at the head of the Foreign Office (p. 86, British 

 Case Appendix) : 



"My Lord. 



"We have the honour to report to your Lordship, that we had 

 yesterday agreeably to appointment, a further conference with the 

 commissioners of the United States." 



And then it proceeds to give in great detail what happened at the 

 conference. And, on the 10th October there was a letter from Mr. 

 Robinson, one of the negotiators, to Viscount Castlereagh, which ap- 

 pears on p. 92 of the British Case Appendix, an extract, in which he 

 states what had happened in the Conference of the 6th October, and 

 a postscript at the foot in which he says : 



"Although from Mr. Goulburn's absence I am not yet enabled to 

 send to your Lordship a detailed account of what passed at our pre- 

 ceding conference (the fifth) on the 6th of October, I think it right 

 to enclose for your information, copies of four articles which we 

 then produced as contreprojets to articles upon similar points, pre- 

 viously submitted by the American plenipotentiaries." 



After the 6th October, to which this informal letter of Mr. Robin- 

 son applies, there is a blank. 



Of course the British Plenipotentiaries went on with their reports. 

 Whatever light their reports would have thrown upon these negotia- 

 tions, whatever light they would have thrown upon the way the words 

 " in common " came in, the reasons why they came in, whatever light 

 they would have thrown upon the views of the negotiators as to the 

 character of the right that was being granted, and the reasons why 

 there were reservations as to trading privileges, imported from for- 

 mer treaties, and a special reservation of the right of restriction re- 

 garding the entry of ships on the non-treaty coast, and no mention of 

 any reservation as to the right of fishing, we cannot tell, but we are 

 entitled to draw the inference that those reports contain nothing 

 which in the slightest degree would shake or mitigate or detract from 

 the statement of Mr. Gallatin in the report that he made. 



So the British negotiators naturally refrained from providing that 

 the grant of the fishing right should be subject to the authority of 

 Great Britain to limit or restrict it by municipal legislation, because 

 that would have been inconsistent with the nature of the right as they 

 understood it. 



Another answer from the British negotiators that is, from their 

 superior officer is the letter of Lord Bathurst, which I have already 

 referred to as the corner-stone of this negotiation. I call the atten- 

 tion of the Tribunal to a paragraph of that letter to which I have 

 already referred for another purpose, p. 274 of the Appendix to 

 the Case of the United States. In this letter Lord Bathurst states 



