22 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



by Great Britain, and therefore the inference is warranted that 

 the American liberties of fishery are similarly exempted. 



The Tribunal is unable to agree with this contention : 

 (a) Because although the French right designated in 1713 merely 

 'an allowance,' (a term of even less force than that used in regard to the 

 American fishery) was nevertheless converted, in practice, into an exclu- 

 sive right ; this concession on the part of Great Britain was presumably 

 made because France, before 1713, claimed to be the sovereign of New- 

 foundland, and, in ceding tlie Island, had, as the American argument 

 says, 'reserved for the benefit of its subjects the right to fish and to use 

 the strand'; 



(6) Because the distinction betvi^een the French and American right 

 is indicated by the different wording of the Statutes for the observance 

 of Treaty obligations towards France and the United States, and by the 

 British Declaration of 1783 ; 



(c) And, also, because this distinction is maintained in the Treaty 

 with France of 1904, concluded at a date when the American claim was 

 approaching its present stage, and by which certain common rights of 

 regulation are recognized to France. 



For the further purpose of such proof it is contended by the 

 United States: 

 (2) That the liberties of fishery, being accorded to the inhabitants of 

 the United States "forever," acquire, by being in perpetuity 

 and unilateral, a character exempting them from local legisla- 

 tion. 

 The Ti'ibiuial is unable to agree with this contention : 



(a) Because there is no necessary connection between the duration 

 of a grant and its essential status in its relation to local regulation ; a 

 right granted in perpetuity may yet be subject to regulation, or, granted 

 temporarily, may yet be exempted therefrom; or being reciprocal may 

 yet be unregulated, or being unilateral may yet be regulated: as is 

 evidenced by the claim of the United States that the liberties of fishery 

 accorded by the Recij)roeity Treaty of 1854 and the Treaty of 1871 were 

 exempt from regulation, though they were neither permanent nor 

 unilateral ; 



(b) Because no peculiar character need be claimed for these liberties 

 in order to secure their enjoyment in perpetuity, as is evidenced by the 

 American negotiators in 1818 asking for the insertion of the word "for- 

 ever." International law in its modern development recognizes that a 

 great number of Treaty obligations are not annulled by war, but at most 

 suspended by it ; 



(c) Because the liberty to dry and cure is, pursuant to the terras of 

 the Treaty, provisional and not permanent, and is nevertheless, in re- 



