126 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



The President: Could it not be said, Mr. Senator Root, that 

 the very general recurrence of a disposition like this one — I have 

 myself looked over these treaties of this period, and T have found 

 none which does not contain a similar disposition — is rather the 

 enactment of a recognized rule or a recognized principle of inter- 

 national law than the estabHshmentof a new principle ? Is not that 

 one of the ways in which international law is developed — that 

 generally recognized principles are put into treaties, are enacted 

 in the written disposition of treaties ? 



Senator Root: -Certainly. 



The President: Was not that, perhaps, one of these develop- 

 ments of international law, that the principle which was already 

 recognized became expressed now in treaties ? 



Senator Root: I should put it rather the other way — that the 

 general recognition of the principle followed the practice dictated 

 by convenience of including the provision in thfe treaties, than that 

 the treaties -arose from the. recognition of the practice; because I 

 do not think that the practice existed at the time when the series 

 of treaties began to put the provision in. I think the world had not 

 yet passed out of the period of isolation into the period of com- 

 mercial free intercourse at that time. And I should say that the 

 practice which we now enjoy was rather the result of the gradual 

 adoption of the rule and putting it into this great number of treaties, 

 so that the world became accustomed to that arrangement of the 

 rights of trade, and finally it became the universal custom. 



Sir Robert Finlay also instances, as furnishing an analogy Upon 

 which we are to assume that the right of regulation existed, rivers 

 and canals; and he asked who would say, when the right to navigate 

 a river or a canal is given, that it is not to be imder the rules and 

 regulations of the country, in which the river or canal is. What 

 rivers and canals ? It is bettei: to answer such a question as that 

 with reference to the rights that are granted. Is there any uni- 

 versal custom under which rights to navigate rivers granted by 

 one nation to another by treaty without any express reservation 

 of the right to regulate the navigation imply such a reservation? 

 Is there any general custom to that effect ? I know of none. Where 



