2124 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



consider rights of the kind conferred in this treaty as constituting 

 a special class with certain special incidents. I am not concerned 

 now with the processes of reasoning by which these writers reached 

 the conclusion. I am not concerned with the name that they gave 

 to the right. I should agree with the Attorney-General that it is an 

 unfortunate name, because it seems to connote a condition of inferi- 

 ority on the part of one to another, which is rather repulsive to the 

 proud spirit of an independent nation. What I am concerned with, 

 and what I wish to impress upon the Tribunal, is that there is, by 

 approved evidence of a great array of the recognised and most highly 

 respected authorities, and has been since long before the treaty of 

 1818 was made, a rule among the nations of the earth to treat this 

 kind of right as having certain special incidents incidents derived 

 from the nature of the right, the nature of the parties to the right, 

 the necessities of the continued existence of the right ; therefore the 

 necessities of effectuating the grant of the right. Whether it be that 

 the conclusion was reached by a process which treated the right as 

 real ; whether by a process which treated it as obligatory I am not 

 concerned with that. I do maintain that, giving full effect to such 

 rights, giving them the full effect of perpetuity, it is necessary to 

 treat them as real rights. But the existence of the rule does not 

 depend upon that; nor does the existence of the rule depend upon a 

 transfer of sovereignty. The essential features of the right which 

 is the subject-matter of the rule here are that it shall, in favour of 

 one independent nation, limit the sovereignty of another independent 

 nation in respect of the use of its territory. The majority of writers 

 consider that it must be perpetual ; some consider that it need not be. 

 We are not concerned with that, here, because this is perpetual, and 

 there are none who place a right which has the basis of perpetuity 

 below a right which has but a temporary continuance. I say that 

 the essential features, and the only essential features of a right which 

 have been universally accepted by the nations as constituting a special 

 class of rights, with certain special incidents, are the features that 

 exist here : That one nation conveys or assures by conventional stipu- 

 lation to another independent nation the right to make a use for its 

 own benefit or the benefit of its citizens, of the territory of the first 

 nation, limiting the sovereignty and I care not whether it be power 

 or rightful exercise limiting the scope of sovereignty of the nation 

 that has conferred the right. I conceive, and humbly submit to the 

 Tribunal, that it would be a very great misfortune, not merely to 

 the interests of these litigants here, both of whom are deeply con- 

 cerned in having a consistent system of international law maintained 

 and built up, but a very great misfortune to the world if a conclusion 

 were to be reached here which ignores, which sets at naught, which 



