242 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



has met with from the authorities of civihzed states, jire circumstances which, 

 though in no case rendering his opinion a substitute of reason, may enhance 

 or derogate from the consideration due to it." 



We have produced here a very great array of evidence as to the 

 existence of an accepted custom among the nations of the earth to 

 consider rights of the kind conferred in this treaty as constituting 

 a special class with certain special incidents. I am not concerned 

 now with the processes of reasoning by which these writers reach, 

 the conclusion. I am not concerned with the narae that they gave 

 to the right. I should agree with the Attorney- General that it is 

 an unfortunate name, because it seems to coimote a condition of 

 inferiority on the part of one to another, which is rather repulsive 

 to the proud spirit of an independent nation. What I am concerned 

 with, and what I wish to impress upon the Tribunal, is that there 

 is, by approved evidence of a great array of the recognized and most 

 highly respected authorities, and has been since long before the 

 treaty of 1818 was made, a rule among the nations of the earth to 

 treat this kind of right as having certain special incidents — inci- 

 dents derived from the nature of the right, the nature of the parties 

 to the right, the necessities of the continued existence of the right; 

 therefore the necessities of effectuating the grant of the right. 

 Whether it be that the conclusion was reached by a process which 

 treated the right as real; whether by a process which treated it as 

 obUgatory — I am not concerned with that. I do maintain that, 

 giving full effect to such rights, giving them the full effect of perpe- 

 tuity, it is necessary to treat them as real rights. But the existence 

 of the rule does not depend upon that; nor does the existence of the 

 rule depend upon a transfer of sovereignty. The essential features 

 of the right which is the subject-matter of the rule here are that it 

 shall, in favor of one independent nation, hmit the sovereignty of 

 another independent nation in respect of the use of its territory. 

 The majority of writers consider that it must be perpetual; some 

 consider that it need not be. We are not concerned with that 

 here, because this is perpetual, and there are none who place a right 

 which has the basis of perpetuity below a right which has but a 

 temporary continuance. I say that the essential features, and the 

 only essential features of a right which have been universally ac- 

 cepted by the nations as constituting a special class of rights, with 



