ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 79 



Senator Root: Precisely, yes; and I shall presently take up 

 the other view and present what seems to be our right — the 

 nature of the right granted and the legal effects of that nature. 



My present proposition is that the British right, as stated and 

 argued by them, involving and based upon the assertion in the 

 fullest possible form that the treaty grant is subject to British 

 sovereignty, is necessarily in its effect destructive; that is to say, 

 it is at their will to make it destructive. 



Take a practical situation: What is the United States to do ? 

 A law is passed which American fishermen think seriously interferes 

 with the profitable prosecution of their industry. The law, in the 

 ordinary course of events, will become effective before the fishermen 

 ever hear of it. They know of it only when some local officer tells 

 them they cannot do thus and so. What are we to do ? Appeal 

 to the government of Newfoundland? Well, the government of 

 Newfoundland is possessed of this spirit and purpose which I have 

 been describing to the Tribunal. We get nothing. Appeal to 

 the government of Great Britain? No one can have a higher 

 respect or a warmer regard for any body poUtic than I have for the 

 government of Great Britain; and no one, certainly, could ever 

 have experienced more courtesy or kinder treatment than I have 

 always experienced from the representatives of that great Power. 

 Nevertheless, one cannot bHnd himself to the fact that a change 

 has taken place in the relations between the government of Great 

 Britain and her colonies in recent years. The change began with 

 this American revolution, which was ended by the treaty of peace 

 in 1783. The Attorney- General, I think it was, referred to it as 

 the civil war, and I rather Uke that way of describing it; for it was 

 a civil war among the people of Great Britain. It was that which 

 first taught Great Britain how to treat colonies. She has profited 

 by the lesson, and owe friends in Canada and Newfoundland and 

 Australia and all over the world have been benefiting by it. And 

 from that time to this the colonies of Great Britain have gradually 

 grown more and more self-governing, and nearer and nearer to 

 an independent attitude. The ties between them and Great Britain 

 have come to be largely voluntary — ties of voluntary adherence, 

 of sentiment, of loyalty. And it has become more and more evident 

 that they would not survive deep and long-continued resentment. 



