improper, ambiguous or obscure passages, or by the provisions of the instrument as a whole. This is so far an exclusive, or rather a controlling method, that if the result afforded by it is incompatible with that obtained by any other means except proof of the intention of the parties, such other means must necessarily be discarded; there being so strong a presumption that the provisions of a treaty are intended to be harmonious, that nothing short of clear proof of intention can justify any interpretation of a single provision which brings it into collision with the undoubted intention of the remainder.”[1]
According to Calvo, Sec. 600 * * “The ambiguity of clauses is sometimes removed by keeping in mind the end which the parties had in view at the moment of the beginning of the negotiations, or by consulting the usages observed in the country most interested in the engagement entered into.
You may also, in order to arrive at a harmonious conclusion, examine the facts, the circumstances which immediately preceded the signature of the agreement, referring to the protocols, the procès-verbal, or to other writings addressed by the negotiators, examining the motives or the causes which have brought about the treaty,—in a word, the reason of the transaction (ratio legis); finally by comparing the text with other treaties, anterior, posterior or contemporary, concluded by the same parties in analogous cases.
Sec. 601. All the articles of the treaty form an indivisible whole, which loses its consistency and value if one alters one of its parts; one should not separate the clauses, nor look at one of them in particular, on its own merits, without taking into account its correlation with those which follow or precede it. One stipulation may appear doubtful, ambiguous when each expression is taken by itself, which will appear clear, precise, altogether justifiable when you consider the accord of all the agreements of which it makes a part.[2]
The Supreme Court of the United States in the Market Co. v. Hoffman, 101 U. S., 115, has said: “We are not at liberty to construe any statute so as to deny effect to any part of its language. It is a cardinal rule of statutory construction that its significance and effect shall, if possible, be accorded to every word. As early as in Bacon's Abridgement, Section 2, it was said a statute ought,
