92 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



the nation, the sovereign and independent nation. What does 

 it get under the contract made with it by Great Britain ? It 

 gets something, of course. It is plain upon the face of the contract 

 what it gets. It gets the right that its inhabitants shall have for- 

 ever, in common with the subjects of His Britannic Majesty, the 

 liberty to take fish of every kind upon the treaty coast. The 

 United States gets by the treaty granted to it the right that its 

 inhabitants shall forever have this liberty, a right of the highest 

 national importance. The individual opportunity for profit is but 

 incidental, subordinate. The thing granted, the great subject- 

 matter of the treaty, what passed from one contracting party to 

 the other contracting party, is the right of the United States to 

 have this door of opportunity forever open to its inhabitants; the 

 great national right, subserving the great national interest, which 

 led Great Britain, in this series of statutes before you, for a long 

 period of years, before 1818, before 1783, to pay boimties, to induce 

 its people to engage in this industry of fishing; so strictly national 

 that Great Britain, and France, and the United States all tax the 

 whole body of their inhabitants to raise the funds to induce citizens 

 to pursue the industry. It is the national interest of forever having 

 open to the people of the nation the opportunity for profitable 

 industry and trade; the national interest for which sovereigns in all 

 the period of modern history have fitted out expeditions and made 

 wars and treaties of reciprocity, and have subsidized steamship 

 lines; and for which all over the world nations have been seeking 

 to open doors to the inhabitants of their countries, holding open the 

 door of the Orient, imder common agreement with all of our coun- 

 tries, in order that the inhabitants of our countries may have the 

 opportunity to enter into the profitable trade of the East. That 

 is the national interest that was subserved, and that is the national 

 right that was granted. It was also the right to a perpetual source 

 of food supply for the people of the United States, the right to a 

 nursery for seamen to defend the coasts of the United States, very 

 great national interests that to-day are leading Great Britain to 

 spend hundreds of milhons in the creation of the greatest navy of 

 the world to protect her food supply and to protect her coasts. 

 That is what was granted by the treaty to the nation with which 

 the treaty was made. 



