QUESTION THREE. 57 



or vessels any fish, oil, salt, provisions, or other necessaries for the 

 use and purpose of that fishery, shall not be liable to any restraint 

 or regulation with respect to days or hours of working, nor to make 

 any entry at the custom-house at Newfoundland, except a report to be 

 made by the master on his first arrival there, and at his clearing out 

 from thence; and that a fee not exceeding 2s. 6d. shall and may be 

 taken by the officers of the customs at Newfoundland for each such 

 report; and that no other fee shall be taken or demanded by any 

 officer of the customs there upon any other pretence whatsoever 

 relative to the said fishery, any law, custom, or usage to the contrary 

 notwithstanding. 



Provided always, and be it enacted, that in case any such fishing 

 ship or vessel shall at her last clearing out from the said island 

 of Newfoundland have on board, or export any goods or merchandise 

 whatsoever except fish, or oil made of fish, such ship or vessel, and 

 the goods thereon laden, shall be subject and liable to the same 

 securities, restrictions, and regulations, in all respects, as they would 

 have been subject and liable to if this Act had not been made, any- 

 thing hereinbefore contained to the contrary notwithstanding. 



UNITED STATES INDEPENDENCE, 1776. 



1776. Immediately prior to the date of the American dec- 

 66 laration of independence, the situation therefore was that no 

 foreign vessels could visit Newfoundland at all ; that all Brit- 

 ish vessels were subject to British customs laws requiring entry at 

 Newfoundland custom houses; and that the partial relief of fishing 

 vessels, from the rigour of those laws and payment of certain fees, 

 applied not to colonial vessels, but to those only which arrived from 

 the British Islands. 



By their declaration of independence the people of the thirteen 

 American colonies abandoned all privileges which they previously 

 had as British subjects, and the only question for discussion is 

 whether when, afterwards, they were permitted to exercise certain 

 privileges in British waters and on British territory, they were 

 impliedly granted immunity from those safeguards against smug- 

 gling with which every nation finds it necessary to surround itself. 



EFFECT OF UNITED STATES CONTENTION. 



The effect of admitting the validity of the United States conten- 

 tion would be that, after the date of the treaty, American fishermen 

 would not only have been in a very much better position as aliens 

 than they had previously been in as British subjects, but that they 

 would have been free from all the supervision which the Britis> 

 parliament thought was continuingly necessary in respect of Brit- 

 ish fishermen. They would have been exempt also from visitation 

 under the hovering statutes which form part of the protective legisla- 

 tion of all maritime nations. 



