briefly disposed of. What happened in the district of Barima, as evidenced by contemporaneous statements, documents and records, we may take as evidence of a certain weight, according to the surrounding circumstances. But as to drawing inferences from the presence of fruit trees, or ditches, in two or three places, as to the creation of a settlement by this or that person or class of persons who might at one time or another have passed through Barima during the course of two hundred years, the evidence is entirely worthless. The presence of these vestiges is in no way remarkable. What is really remarkable, and we may say almost amazing, is that, with all the means of investigation in their possession, and with the help of surprisingly zealous and able public officials, backed by a large population of only too willing Indians, the British Case can produce only such shreds of testimony as to settlement of any kind, anybody, in the district of Barima.

The question of Dutch settlement in Barima may be dismissed in a word. The Case shows affirmatively and positively that no such settlement was ever made, during the whole period of the Dutch colony, by Dutch authority, even before the Colony prohibited it in 1766, and that no Dutch settler was even there with a knowledge of the Colonial authorities, except in the case of Rosen, which led to the order forbidding settlement. In the face of such a record, it is idle to attempt to bolster up this Case with suggestions about fruit trees, and ditches, and traditions, and matters of that kind. The Dutch colonial records are here, spread out to interminable length, dealing with every detail of colonial life with a minuteness that would neither have been required nor permitted had not the government been that of a trading colony. With every grant of land set forth, with every occurrence of any mo ment that happened in its history, there is not one syllable in it from beginning to end to indicate that the Dutch ever knew of any settlement in Barima.

CHAPTER XIII.

POLITICAL CONTROL.

In view of the fact that, under the Treaty, the Arbitrators are empowered in their discretion to consider the exclusive political control of a district sufficient to constitute adverse holding, or to make title by prescription, it becomes necessary to refer to the necessary attributes or requirements of such control.

The general principles and definitions of the phrase "political control," as used in the Treaty, have already been considered, and it has been shown to be the exercise of sovereignty over territory through political or governmental administration; and, further, that "exclusive political control of a district" means such an exercise of sovereignty over the district to the exclusion of all other Sovereignty.

Political control or jurisdiction may be either territorial or personal. In general, the political control which is implied in the term "sovereignty" is a control exercised over everybody in the territory of the sovereign, and over the subjects of the sovereign everywhere. In the first sense, it is territorial; in the second, it is personal.

The political control of which the treaty speaks is political control of a district. It must therefore include territorial control. Mere personal control of subjects is not sufficient. It is not enough to show that the Government making the claim exercised control over its subjects either in what were its undisputed territories, or in territories outside of these, whether in dispute or not. The present controversy is not concerned with such control. Such a control as this may be, and generally is, very freely exercised by Colonial Governments in a country as yet not fully settled. An offending subject who has committed an offense against the person or the property of another subject, or who has per

formed acts injurious to the State, such as quarrelling or meddling with the Indians, or has done anything which is contrary to public policy or of which the law takes cognizance, is in such Governments punished without reference to the place where the offence was committed.

Thus it happened once or twice that the Dutch authorities found a Dutchman stirring up the Indians or ill-treating them in such a way as to provoke reprisals and punished the Dutchman. They also found Dutchmen committing offenses against other Dutchmen which they punished as those of Cauderas and Van Rosen.

The Governor of the Dutch colony, like the Governors of all colonies of the period, and as a matter of necessity under the circumstances, exercised a disciplinary oversight of the colonoists. Such an oversight was necessary for the safety of the colony, and was exercised by him freely upon the members of the colony wherever they might be.

The exercise of this personal jurisdiction is fully recognized by International Law. Says Mr. Justice Johnson:

The jurisdiction of a country may be exercised over her citizens wherever they are, in right of their allegiance; as it has been in the instance of punishing offenses committed against the Indian."

Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, 5 Peters, U. S. Sup.
Ct. Rep., 1, at page 31.

Territorial jurisdiction, on the other hand, is a jurisdiction exercised not with reference to the citizenship or nationality of the individual, but with reference to the territory upon which the offender is found, or in which the offense is committed. It operates not only upon the citizens or subjects of the Government which exercises it, but it operates in like manner upon foreign citizens or subjects. No one within the territory is exempt from the operation of the territorial law. That is an elementary proposition. As, therefore, it is hardly to be supposed that in a district promiscuously occupied by the subjects of one State and by the subjects of another State, possibly with numerous others also

coming in from a third State, all the offences are committed only by the subjects of the first State, a political control territorial in its character will be disclosed immediately by the trial and punishment of offenders from among the subjects of the other State. If it turns out, however, that no such jurisdiction is claimed in reference to any but the subjects of one State, who are, if anything, in the minority, it is conclusive evidence that whatever control is exercised is not territorial, but personal.

Applying these principles to the disputed territory, it will be found that the Dutch authority was never exercised, either by way of process and arrest, or process without arrest, or arrest without process, or trial and punishment, or trial without punishment, or punishment without trial, against any Spaniards or against any Frenchmen. It was not until they came within the Eesequibo or Pomeroon limits comprising their actual settlements and plantations, that any jurisdictional measures were taken against foreigners, and then only for acts actually committed in such territory, or for offences against the territorial authority at the frontier, such as smuggling and the like. Within these frontiers, within, that is to say, the falls of the Cuyuni, on banks of the Essequibo and Pomeroon, they did exercise this jurisdiction. There they arrested Spaniards, Frenchmen and Englishmen. But they never did anything of the kind outside. Nor did they snforce any authority against Dutchmen unless they belonged to the colony of Essequibo.

There being an entire absence of evidence in the British Case as to any real political control over the territory west of the Moruca and of the falls of the Cuyuni, the Case has attempted to supply the want by an immense mass of material relating to miscellaneous acts in the disputed territory, such as trade, fishing, mining, timber cutting, the relations with the Indians, the capture of runaway slaves and what not. Each of these is considered in its proper place in this Argument, and it is shown that

such of the acts referred to as were performed at all, were in no sense acts of political control.

Even the alleged regulation of trade by the Dutch authorities was merely the enforcement of a prohibition on its own subjects, in order that they might not enter into competition with the Company. The latter never did an act or took a step of any kind whatever to prohibit this trade in its freest form to any person outside of the Dutch colonists. Its monopoly of the trade, so far as it had any, was in the nature of personal control of its subjects, not in any sense of territorial control as to the territory where the trade was carried on.

In order to have any significance, under the Treaty, political control, or the exercise of sovereignty through political or governmental administration, must be to the exclusion, during the entire period, of all other sovereignty and control.

It follows that a political control, even supposing that any such was exercised by the party claiming adverse holding in the disputed territory, which was shared equally by both the claimants to such territory, could not have been an exclusive political control, and could not come within the definition of the Treaty.

Nor is the political control which is required in the one case to prevent the adverse holding from being exclusive any greater than the political control which, under the Treaty, is necessary to establish the adverse holding. If the political control necessary for this purpose rests upon such acts as issuing passports, trading, holding relations with Indians, and the like, the performance of similar acts by anothhs State, although they may fall equally short of political control, is sufficient to prevent the first from being an exclusive political control. However slight may be the control exercised by the other State, it is just as effective a control, it is just as much a political control, as the control exercised by the first, and is all sufficient to prevent the latter from being characterized as exclusive. It is not an exclusive political control, where the control is divided.