DISCUSSION. 
Mr. OLSEN. I have listened with very great interest to this excellent paper. A 
better one I do not think we shall be able to hear in this assembly, for it touches the 
chord of everything that affects the regulations of the fisheries on the high seas. With 
regard to Moray Firth, which the speaker referred to, I am sorry to stand here and 
confess that we have to-day about thirty English steam trawlers sailing under foreign 
flags, for the simple purpose of poaching in the Moray Firth. It seems to me disgraceful 
that such things should be done; but, on the other hand, it is quite right that the Moray 
Firth should be open to trawling, inasmuch as the 3-mile limit is considered and that 
the bay which they have drawn the line across is something like 90 miles in width, 
contains a great area of water, and that that piece of water is open to all nations, accord- 
ing to the convention of 1882. The poaching (I can not call it anything else) is certainly 
a very mean way of trying to avoid the law by putting the vessel under another flag. 
Such things I have personally objected to. This bone of contention, trawling in the 
Moray Firth, is a thing that the British Government can not legally enforce nor prevent, 
for it is not the property of the British nation, since it was agreed to in the convention 
of the contracting parties. It belongs to the convention only to police, and not to one 
country. I think it impossible either for this congress or for any other congress to 
induce the British Government to give up that piece of water. The only way I can 
conceive is that a tribunal, an international society, be formed for the purpose of adjust- 
ing all kinds of grievances respecting the fishery laws, etc., and that this society be 
able to so formulate the requirements as to bring it before the Government in question, 
with a lot of influence behind it to induce the home governments to legislate for the 
fishermen and all those engaged in the industry. 
Mr. FrvER. Mr. President, ladies, and gentlemen, the very important diplomatic 
issues involved in the paper read before us just now, and especially in reference to the 
case of the Moray Firth in Scotland, are so serious that I feel I can not properly deal 
with them in the short space of time at our disposal this morning; but I think that one 
little explanation is necessary on the point of the apparently doubtful position which 
the United Kingdom has assumed in regard to jurisdiction beyond the 3-mile limit. 
The facts are as stated in the paper; but one simple point was omitted, and that is 
in reference to the peculiar position of the boat against which the proceedings in the 
case referred to were taken. The justification for the apparent exercise of sovereign 
rights over a foreign vessel at a distance of more than 3 miles from low-water mark was 
found in the fact that this vessel was manned mainly by British subjects. The law in 
question was a domestic law; it was aimed at British subjects; and it was felt to be an 
improper thing that by the mere transfer of a ship from the British to a foreign flag, and 
by the employment of British subjects as fishermen, that vessel should be able to escape 
the purely domestic municipal law of the country which made it. This was the ground 
upon which the apparently inconsistent attitude of the British Government was justified 
and maintained in the high court in Scotland. The question has not reached its ultimate 
solution yet, but the position is so exceedingly delicate, and involves so many important 
diplomatic considerations—being, in point of fact, now the subject of diplomatic inter- 
course between the several nations of Europe which are fishing in this water—that I do 
not propose to enter further into it; especially seeing that, although I happen to be an 
@ As this paper was not read in full, the discussion pertains only to points treated in the abstract. 
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