1V6 INTERNATIONAL TREATIES. 



Lord RoseLei'v, wlio was then Foreign Minister, replied in firm 

 .-.and dignified terms. The following is an extract from his 

 xlespatch : " I have no desire to re-open the discussion on the 

 numerous points in dispute ; but I cannot rel'rain from de- 

 precating more particularly the claim put forward by your 

 government to ignore, during the fisliin^ season the territorial 

 jurisdiction fiowing from the sovereign rights of the British 

 Crown over the whole of the Island of Newfoundland, expressly 

 conferred by the terms of the 13th article of the Treaty of 

 Utrecht ; nor can I pass in silence the reiterated assertion, in 

 your note, of an exclusive right of fishing on the part of the coast 

 ,on which the French treaty rights exist. There can be no doubt 

 that the inhabitants must not ' interrupt by their competition' 

 the French fishermen ; but Her Majesty's Government can 

 hardly believe that the French Government could intend to 

 fipply to them the term ' foreigner ;' or to question the right of 

 the colonists to procure the means of subsistence by fishing on 

 their own coast, so long as they do not interfere wdth the Treaty 

 Rights of the French fishermen. Such a claim has no precedent 

 in history, and would be not only repugnant to reason, but op- 

 posed to the jiractice of years, and to the actual terms of the 

 Declaration of Versailles, which ]3rovide that the old methods of 

 fishing 'shall not be deviated from by either party,' showing 

 conclusively that the French right to the fishery is not an 

 exclusive one." 



THE LOBSTER DISPUTE. 



In 1889 a new and very serious complication arose in connec- 

 tion with the French-shore question, which "made confusion 

 worse confounded." On the treaty shore the British residents 

 had several years before commenced the new industry of canning 

 lobsters. It prospered so well that by 1889 some forty lobster 

 factories had l)een erected on the shore. Tlien it suddenly oc- 

 .curred to the French that they had a right to share in this indus- 

 try, and tliey erected a small number of factories. Their views 

 .expanded rajiidly, and speedily they preferred an exclusive claim 



