ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 187 



enjoyed by individuals and not by a class bound closely to the 

 speci&c rights of a treaty. 



These two kinds of right demand and receive entirely different 

 treatment. The principles applicable to one are inapplicable to 

 the other as a matter of justice, equity, convenience, the reason of 

 the thing, which is Mansfield's definition of international law. 

 The counsel for Great Britain have been urging upon you that you 

 shall read into this provision the reservation of the right in Great 

 Britain to treat this grant as if it were a general grant to be enjoyed 

 by individuals in common with the natives of the country, while 

 they treat their laws upon the other and irreconcilable theory. 

 They treat their laws as laws not bound in any respect to give to 

 the persons enjoying the privilege of this fishery grant an oppor- 

 tunity as if they were, in fact, exercising the privileges in common 

 with the people of Newfoundland. They wish to read their right 

 into the treaty and to preserve their right against their own theory 

 of the treaty. The treaty must be read either in one way or the 

 other. If the treaty is a treaty to be considered as subject to those 

 rights of municipal legislation that arise from the interminghng of 

 individuals and foreigners in common opportunity, common privi- 

 lege, and the common exercise of a common right, then their laws 

 should give that to us. If, on the other hand, this treaty is to be 

 read as a treaty in the exercise of which we, as a class, coming from 

 a foreign shore, under a foreign flag, fishing in competition with the 

 people of Newfoundland, are to be rigidly restrained to the letter 

 of our treaty grant, they must not read into the treaty right that 

 it imposes upon us regulations which are appropriate, natural, and 

 reasonable to the exercise of the other kind of right. 



That is what Lord Bathurst had in his mind; that is what the 

 negotiators, as reported by Mr. Gallatin, had in their minds; that 

 is why they imposed an express reservation of the right of regulation 

 upon the treaty grant of 181 5, and why, when they came to deal 

 with this fishery right, they imposed no such reservation; and why, 

 as to one of the three rights, they made an express regulation; as 

 to another they expressed a limited right of restriction, and as to 

 the third they were silent. 



I call your Honors' attention to the fact that the propositions 

 which I am now making depend not at all upon the essential char- 



