ARGUMENT OF ELIHU ROOT. 2207 



There is only one further subject regarding Question 2 that I care 

 to speak of : 



Something was said about the presentation of a certificate by 



anybody coming there to exercise this right, saying he is an 



1334 inhabitant of the United States. That occurred during the 



course of the discussion by Mr. Elder upon the kind of papers 



which a vessel should produce. 



I merely wish to guard against its being taken to apply to indi- 

 viduals, as distinct from people coming upon vessels, and exhibiting 

 the documents of the vessels. 



Of course when any right, any general right is granted to a 

 country to have its subjects or citizens, or inhabitants have rights 

 or privileges in another country, the presumption always is that 

 any of the class specified as the class for the benefit for which the 

 right is granted, are entitled to exercise it. If there is to be a pro- 

 hibition or limitation why that must be stated, and in the absence of 

 any express prohibition or limitation upon the part of the country 

 to which the class belongs, the intent of the grantee of the right must 

 be presumed to be that all of the class shall exercise it. 



I will pass to Question 3. 



" Can the exercise by the inhabitants of the United States of the 

 liberties referred to in the said article be subjected without the 

 consent of the United States, to the requirements of entry or report 

 at custom-houses, or the payment of light, or harbour, or other dues, 

 or to any. other similar requirement, or condition, or exaction? " 



First, as to the requirement of entry or report at custom-house. 

 Those are two very different things. The Attorney-General was not 

 inaccurate in stating that the paper to be signed would not differ 

 very much in one case from the paper which might well be signed in 

 the other case, but " entry " and " report " are two quite distinct 

 things. 



I think it is quite appropriate that a vessel going upon the treaty 

 coast, and intending to claim the treaty right, should declare herself; 

 that if the place where she purposes to exercise the right is a place 

 Avhere there is a custom-house, or any officer qualified to receive 

 a report, she should make it; or if, without interfering with the 

 exercise of the right, passing a custom-house or a place where there is 

 an official, she can make the report, that she should make it. That is 

 quite reasonable. I should take very kindly to a class of regulations 

 such as we have illustrated under the British Treaty with France 

 of 1839. If I remember correctly, there were a series of regulations 

 prepared a few years after that treaty. Under the Xorth Sea Con- 

 vention of 1882, and many other conventions, vessels are obliged to 

 carry numbers plainly displayed. You can see the numbers up here 

 in the fishing port of Scheveningen. I believe they have a sort of 



