90 
17. That this prohibition of the supply of bait has been the 
principal, if not the sole, cause of the “lobster ” difficulty. The 
claims of the French to erect and operate lobster factories on the 
coast, and to prevent our people from carrying on that industry, 
are not asserted for the sake of the value of the business, per se, 
to the French, for it really possesses none for them; nor for the 
reason that its prosecution by our people is a hindrance, or — 
“interruption,” to the French in their “fishery,” within the — 
meaning of the treaties. The lobster business is of importance _ 
to the French only as a lever by which (¢.¢., by prohibiting New- — 
foundlanders from prosecuting the business, which is important — 
and profitable to them) the French believe they can force them — 
to terms in relation to the supply of bait. a 
18. That, in brief, having practically abandoned the fishery to 
which the treaties related, and taken to the Bank fishery, to 
which the treaties have no relation, and having developed that © 
fishery by means of large bounties, to our injury and threatened — 
ruin, they are using their shadowy and (to them) worthless 
*‘ claims” or rights upon the land, and their still more baseless — 
“exclusive” claims to the lobster business, as a means of : 
compelling Newfoundlanders to furnish them with the supply of © 
bait which is indispensable to the success of their unfair and — 
bounty-fed competition. j 
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THE ONLY POSSIBLE SOLUTION, 
From this summary view of the whole situation, and from a — 
practical as well as a legal standpoint, we hold as incontrovertible 
conclusions, that all attempts at a solution of the present — 
difficulties—whether by arbitration, joint commissions, or other — 
such expedients—by which the spirit of these old treaties is — 
preserved, must be absolute failures, only keeping alive new — 
disputes, every day increasing in frequency and acrimony; that — 
the anomalies and hardships under which our people are suffering _ 
have become intolerable ; that the utmost bounds of endurance © 
on their part have been reached; and that there is but one © 
practicable way of escaping from, or even of mitigating, the evil, 
and that is the termination of the treaty “rights” out of which 
all these hardships, anomalies, and unforeseen troubles have — 
arisen. a 
When we speak of terminating these “rights,” it is not to be — 
