2078 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



foundlander he would have been arrested, tried and convicted. If 

 we drew a seine together upon the same strand, punishment would 

 follow to him, or confiscation to my vessel. If I say that T want liait 

 or the implements of fishing, I can not obtain them but at the risk of 

 criminality on his part. 



One right is a right in which the individual mingle:- \\ith the 

 community subject to the same laws and entitled to the same oppor- 

 tunities. There are millions of people, natives of one country, who 

 are living so in peace in the other countries of the earth to-day; but 

 under the other right there is a special class set part with none of 

 these opportunities, to be held down narrowly and rigidly to the piv- 

 cise right that is found within the four corners of the treaty. Laws 

 and regulations which are bound to operate equally upon individuals 

 are bound, in the working of human nature, to operate unequally 

 when established by one class as against another class. There is a 

 radical and perpetual distinction between the two, and for month> 

 here counsel for Great Britain have been seeking to drive into your 

 minds an impression which would lead you to read into the treaty of 

 1818 as to the fishing grant, considerations appropriate only to the 

 exercise of the other kind of right which can be enjoyed by individ 

 uals and not by a class bound closely to the specific rights of a treaty. 



These two kinds of right demand and receive entirely different 

 treatment. The principles applicable to one are inapplicable to the 

 other as a matter of justice, equity, convenience, the reason of tin- 

 thing, which is Mansfield's definition of international law. Tin- 

 counsel for Great Britain have been urging upon you that you shall 

 read into this provision the reservation of the right in Great Britain 

 to treat this grant as if it were a general grant to be enjoyed by indi- 

 viduals in common with the natives of the country, while they treat 

 their laws upon the other and irreconcilable theory. They treat 

 their laws as laws not bound in any respect to give to the person- 

 enjoying the privilege of this fishery grant an opportunity as if they 

 were, in fact, exercising the privileges in common with the people 

 of Newfoundland. They wish to read their right into the treaty 

 and to preserve their right against their own theory of the treaty. 

 The treaty must be read either in one way or the other. If the 

 treaty \s a treaty to be considered as subject to those rights of mu- 

 nicipal legislation that arise from the intermingling of individuals 

 and foreigners in common opportunity, common privilege, and the 

 common exercise of a common right, then their laws should give 

 that to us. If. on the other hand, this treaty is to be read as a treaty 

 in the exercise of which we. as a class, coming from a foreign shore. 

 under a foreign flag, fishing in competition with the people of New- 

 foundland, are to be rigidly restrained to the letter of our treat v 

 grant, they must not read into the treaty right that it imposes upon 



