IXTEllNATIOXAL TREATIES. 173 



wilderness, and the population have been cooped up in the more 

 barren and least desirable half of the island. Of all their " his- 

 toric misfortunes" this has been incomparably the greatest. Of 

 all grievances of whicli the people have had reason to complain, 

 this is the one which most loudly calls for redress. 



EXCLUSIVE OF CONCURRENT RIGHTS. 



Had tlie just and fair interpretation of the language of those 

 treaties been insisted on and carried into practical effect from the 

 outset by the Imperial Government, and had the unreasonable 

 demands of the French, which were unwarranted by the terms 

 ■of these docimients, l)een promptly and steadily repudiated, the 

 colony would not liave been called upon to endi;re such hard- 

 ships and losses, although the legitimate treaty-rights of the 

 French would still have been felt as an embarrassment and a 

 hindrance in the development of the natural resources of the 

 island. It is true that the French have no territorial rights, 

 and are prohibited from forming any fixed settlements ; it is 

 ■also true that their right of fishing along the line of coast is not 

 exclusive but concurrent, and that their claim to an exclusive 

 fishery has never been recognized by England, and has been and 

 continues to be most emphatically repudiated by the colony 

 itself. Still the French have so pertinaciously and unweariedly 

 endeavoured to exercise exclusive fishing rights, and have sho^\^l 

 such jealousy regarding them, that they have succeeded in prac- 

 tically preventing Xewfoundland fishermen from exercising the 

 concurrent right \\-hich the treaties warrant, and which they 

 justly claim, by fishing within the treaty bounds. Here it is 

 that England has failed in her duty to her colonial offshoot. 

 Her statesmen have always recognized this concurrent right of 

 fishing and utterly refused to admit of an exclusive right on the 

 part of the French ; yet, dreading the results of quarrels arising 

 between the fi.shermen of the two nations when prosecuting their 

 calling in the same waters, they have discountenanced all at- 

 tempts at fishing on the part of Newfoundland fishermen along 

 Ihat portion of the shore on which the French have treaty rights. 



