314 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



Senator Root: Yes; any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or 

 harbors. 



The PnEsroENT: Then it would be the same if it said "of any 

 of the coasts, any of the bays, creeks, or harbors," if it refers to the 

 whole ? One could repeat before every one of those words ? 



Sir Charles Fitzpatrick: It must be repeated, imder gram- 

 matical construction. 



Senator Root : It would not give the same force of classification 

 as where they are grouped in under the same words. "Any of the 

 coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors" carries the idea of a combination 

 of coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors; and any of those combinations 

 of coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors is the idea carried in this form of 

 words. 



Sir Charles Fitzpatrick: If you were parsing that sentence, 

 would you not say "of any of the coasts, of any of the bays, of any 

 of the creeks, or of any of the harbors" ? 



Senator Root: I should say "any" quaKfied all those words. 



In connection with this suggestion, I think the distributive use 

 of the word "coasts" occurred in the treaty of 1783, as well as in 

 the treaty of 1818, and I think that it had its origin in one of the 

 British proposals, which appears at p. 96 of the British Counter- 

 Case Appendix. This paper in which this occurs is a draft of the 

 preliminary articles sent by Mr. Townshend to Mr. Strachey, and 

 the whole thing consists of proposals made by the British at a 

 meeting which, I think, was on the 25th November, between the 

 negotiators, in 1782. That proposal I will read, from about the 

 middle of the page: 



"The citizens of the United States shall have the hberty of taking fish 

 of every kind on all the banks of Newfoundland, and also in the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence, and also to dry and cure their fish on the shores of the Isle 

 of Sables, and on the shores of any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks 

 of the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, so long as such bays, 

 harbors, and creeks shall continue and remain unsettled. On condition 

 that the citizens of the said United States do not exercise the said fishery, 

 but at the distance of Three leagues from all the coasts belonging to Great 

 Britain, as well those of the continent, as those of the islands situated in the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence. And as to what relates to the fishery on the coasts 



