Ii6 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



The President: Will you kindly continue, Mr. Senator Root?* 



Senator Root: It follows from the nature of the right that 

 was granted to the United States, quite independently of the ques- 

 tion, whether the grant to the United States must be treated as 

 a conveyance by reason of the peremptory requirement of perpe,tual 

 existence imported in the word "forever," and from the fact that 

 this grant was to the United States, that when the inhabitants of 

 the United States go upon the treaty coast for the purpose of exer- 

 cising the Hberty that they have, they go there by virtue of the 

 authority which they derive from their own government, not by 

 virtue of an authority derived by them from the British Govern- 

 ment, avaihng themselves of a right which their coimtry has inter- 

 nationally as against the general sovereign of the territory, by 

 virtue of the grant which that general sovereign has made to their 

 sovereign. The right which they exercise is a right that is there- 

 fore beyond the competency of the general sovereign of the territory 

 — that is to say. Great Britain — to destroy or to impair or to 

 change. It is a right which it is competent only for their own 

 government to destroy or to impair or to change. That is equiva- 

 lent to saying, in another form, that the right which they exercise 

 is a right that they hold under their sovereign, and which that 

 sovereign has acquired from Great Britain. 



Under the wayin which the exercise of this right has been treated 

 by Britain, and in which it is the claim of Great Britain to be entitled 

 to treat it, the American fishermen constitute a separate class by 

 themselves, who, although Great Britain claims them to be subject 

 to all her rights of municipal legislation, because the right that 

 they have is a right in common, nevertheless are excluded from the 

 real common exercise of the right. I hope I make it plain. It is 

 that when the inhabitants of the United States go upon the treaty 

 coast and exercise the Hberty that is the subject of this grant to 

 their country, under the view which Great Britain takes of the 

 force of the words "in common," of the fact that the liberty is in 

 common, they are treated as being a special class by themselves, 



'Friday, August $, 1910, 2.15 P.M. 



