2 52 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



by various routes and on various grounds, but all coming to the 

 same conclusion, accepted and confirmed by usage. 



These very rights regarding which we have been arguing (the 

 French and American fishing rights on the Newfoundland coast) 

 have generally been regarded, have been specified, as examples of 

 the class of right standing by itself, protected from the exercise of 

 the sovereign power of the burdened state, and that use of them as 

 examples is found in Bonfils, Chr6tien, Clauses, Despagnet, Diena, 

 Fabre, HoUatz, Holtzendorflf, Merignhac, Olivart, Oppenheim, 

 Rivier, UUmann, Wharton, and some others I dare say, but those 

 I have noted. 



Now, if it is possible for anyone to support argument by author- 

 ity, if it is possible for anyone to give dignity and consideration to 

 the process of his own reasoning by showing that others have 

 reached the same conclusion, we certainly have given substance, 

 and weight, and authority to the conclusion which we have been 

 deducing here from the record and from the nature of this grant. 



There is one matter to which I must call attention before leav- 

 ing the subject. Counsel for Great Britain have cited a number 

 of decisions in the United States in regard to the exercise of rights 

 of fishing by the people of one state in the territory of another, and 

 some cases in the British colonies. I shall not detain you by any 

 extended consideration of those cases. In the British colonies 

 they were a matter of the internal polity of the British Empire. 

 All these laws had to receive the approval of the Sovereign, they 

 became laws by the authority of the sovereign law, and present 

 purely a matter of internal polity. These laws, statutes, and cases 

 in the United States also are entirely a matter of internal polity, 

 the internal distribution of power within our own country, and can 

 have no relation whatever to an international question of this 

 description. 



There was, however, one case which was referred to as indicating 

 that the courts of the United States took a rather inconsistent posi- 

 tion with regard to the rights conferred upon an Indian tribe by 

 what we call a treaty. That comes pretty nearly being a matter 

 of internal polity, for our Indian tribes are rather dependent sov- 

 ereigns; nevertheless the .case is worthy of attention because it 

 involves a charge of inconsistency. 



