ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 267 



the cases specified in the Treaty of i8i8, within three miles of the entrance 

 of any bay on the coast of Nova Scotia or New Brunswick " 



That is to say, American fishermen may pursue their avocation 

 in any part of the Bay of Fundy provided they do not approach 

 within 3 miles of the entrance of any bay on the coast of Nova 

 Scotia, or on the coast of New Brunswick. 



Now, insensibly Lord Aberdeen is using the term there, exactly 

 as we say it was used in the treaty. 



My learned friend Mr. Ewart told us that we might substitute 

 for this general distributive use of the word "coasts" on any of 

 the coasts, bays, and so forth — that we might substitute on the 

 coasts of Nova Scotia, and the coasts of New Brunswick, and the 

 coasts of Prince Edward Island, and the coasts of Newfoundland; 

 and that is exactly what Lord Aberdeen does here; and the neces- 

 sary result is that which you get here in this description by Lord 

 Aberdeen, that the coasts meant in the treaty are the coasts of 

 Nova Scotia, the coasts of New Brunswick, the coasts of New- 

 foundland, and the bays are the bays of those coasts. 



It is the kind of view which one naturally falls into in dealing 

 with a fisherman's subject, looking at the subject from the point of 

 view of the exercise of the fisherman's avocation, as Lord Aberdeen 

 was here, as the treaty-makers were — the fisherman who crawls 

 along the coast, to whom this (indicating on map) is one coast, and 

 that is another, looking at it from the interior point of view, and not 

 the point of view of the great merchant ship that comes jailing 

 across the sea from the coast of Europe, and that looks at the 

 western coast of the ocean as a whole. That is the occasion of this 

 distributive form, and I shall presently show that it had an origin 

 in a still more distributive and separative use of the word. 



Now, this question depends, as a matter of reasoning, in the 

 view of the United States, upon this fxmdamental proposition that 

 the terms of the renunciation clause are to be Hmited, as a matter 

 of construction, to the matter which was in controversy. As to 

 that I do not understand that there is any dispute. The article 

 recites that 



"difierences have arisen respecting the hberty, claimed by the United States 

 for the inhabitants thereof, to take, dry, and cure fish on certain coasts, bays, 

 harbors, and creeks." 



