ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 



311 



to Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Rush referred them to these papers, and 

 the instructions sent to Messrs. Robinson and Goulburn by the 

 British Foreign Office referred them to these papers. They say: 

 "You have them." And they did have them, and their under- 

 standing from them was necessarily complete and distinct as to 

 what Great Britain's claim to the extent of her maritime jurisdiction 

 was; that jurisdiction, within which the renunciation clause must 

 be limited, and within which must have been all the coasts, bays, 

 harbors, and inlets, mentioned in that renunciation clause. 



That leads us to a conclusion regarding the meaning of thcword 

 "bays" in the renunciation clause that agrees perfectly with a 

 variety of circumstances tending in the same direction. In the first 

 place it agrees with what we would naturally suppose was meant 

 by the use of the word in the class of places in which we find the 

 word "bays"; "coasts" in the distributive sense, bays, creeks, 

 and harbors. On the principle ejusdem generis, the kind of bays 

 they were talking about were the kind of bays that could be classi- 

 fied properly with creeks and harbors — not these great stretches 

 of sea belonging to a different classification, and which must be 

 considered with a different set of ideas altogether. It agrees with 

 the inference we would naturally draw from the fact that these men 

 who were making this treaty were treating of bays as places for 

 shelter, and for repairs, and for obtaining wood and water. It is 

 probable that men who were thinking about bays as places for 

 shelter and for repairs and for obtaining wood and water should, 

 when they used the word "bays," use it with reference to that kind 

 of a bay. It agrees with the inference we would naturally draw 

 from the use of the word by men — 



Sir Charles Fitzpatrick: Pardon me a moment, Mr. Root. 

 You say "that kind of a bay." That would be a bay which would 

 form part of a coast; that is to say, a bay less than 6 miles wide ? 



Senator Root: It would be a bay where people could find 

 shelter; where they could — ■ 



Sir Charles Fitzpatrick: You say "such bays" would mean 

 the bays referred to above, which bays would be, on your construc- 

 tion, bays less than 6 miles wide ? 



