ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 183 



And then it proceeds to give in great detail what happened at 

 the conference. And on the loth October there was a letter from 

 Mr. Robinson, one of the negotiators, to Viscount Castlereagh, 

 which appears on p. 92 of the British Case Appendix, an extract, 

 in which he states what had happened in the Conference of the 

 6th October, and a postscript at the foot in which he says: 



"Although from Mr. Goulburn's absence I am not yet enabled to send 

 to your Lordship a detailed account of what passed at our preceding con- 

 ference (the fifth) on the 6th of October, I think it right to enclose for your 

 information, copies of four articles which we then produced as contre-prqjets 

 to articles upon similar points, previously submitted by the American pleni- 

 potentiaries." 



After the 6th October, to which this informal letter of Mr. 

 Robinson applies, there is a blank. 



Of course the British plenipotentiaries went on with their 

 reports. Whatever light their reports would have thrown upon 

 these negotiations, whatever light they would have thrown upon 

 the way the words "in common" came in, the reasons why they 

 came in, whatever Hght they would have thrown upon the views 

 of the negotiators as to the character of the right that was being 

 granted, and the reasons why there were reservations as to trading 

 privileges, imported from former treaties, and a special reservation 

 of the right of restriction regarding the entry of ships on the non- 

 treaty coast, and no mention of any reservation as to the right of 

 fishing, we cannot tell, but we are entitled to draw the inference 

 that those reports contain nothing which in the shghtest degree 

 would shake or mitigate or detract from the statement of Mr. 

 Gallatin in the report that he made. 



So the British negotiators naturally refrained from providing 

 that the grant of the fishing right should be subject to the authority 

 of Great Britain to hmit or restrict it by municipal legislation, 

 because that would have been inconsistent with the nature of the 

 right as they understood it. 



Another answer from the British negotiators — that is, from 

 their superior officer — is the letter of Lord Bathurst, which I have 

 already referred to as the cornerstone of this negotiation. I call 

 the attention of the Tribunal to a paragraph of that letter to which 

 I have already referred for another purpose, p. 274 of the Appendix 



