ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 95 



sovereign, to be held under the trust of sovereignty, without 

 accountability, for the benefit of its inhabitants. 



Sib. Charles Fitzpateick: Is there not another necessary 

 result — to protect them in the exercise of the right? 



Senator Root: Only as every sovereign has a right to protect 

 all its citizens in the exercise of their rights. But that is not a 

 right of the treaty. It is not a right under the treaty. Wherever 

 a citizen of Great Britain, or of France, or of the United States 

 may go he is entitled to have the protection of his government for 

 his rights. Whatever national right may exist, the nation has 

 internationally the right to protect it, but not a right derived from 

 a treaty — a right inherent in the independence of nations. When 

 a British ship sails the ocean and is arrested, is attacked, the power 

 of Great Britain can be used to protect it. It needs no treaty to 

 give that power; the protection of it may be war — not the exercise 

 of a treaty right. When France gave notice to Great Britain, in 

 the correspondence that is here and that Mr. Turner referred to, 

 that she proposed to enforce her rights on the treaty coast — rather 

 a peremptory correspondence, the Tribunal will remember — ■ and 

 Great Britain answered back that she proposed to enforce hers, 

 that did not mean the exercise of treaty rights. It meant war. 

 When Mr. Evarts had this correspondence here with Lord Gran- 

 ville about the question as to whether we would be compelled to 

 send ships of war to the treaty coast, that did not mean the exercise 

 of a treaty right. It meant war. The treaty right, and the full 

 extent of the sovereign right that* comes to the United States under 

 the treaty, is to deal with its own inhabitants. 



Sir Charles Fitzpatrick: The power to regulate its own 

 inhabitants ? 



Senator Root: Its own inhabitants, yes. We do not claim 

 any right over British subjects that we deny to Great Britain over 

 ours. I mean, we do not in respect of this very treaty right. Of 

 course we do not claim any such right in that vast field of jurisdic- 

 tion which exists, because that is British territory, and which is 

 not affected at all by this question. 



