DESPATCHES, EEPOETS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 459 



legislation to regulate the enjoyment by our people of the inshore 

 fishery which seems to be intimated, if not asserted, in Lord Salis- 

 bury's note." 



273 In reply to this communication, Lord Salisbury, 7th No- 

 vember, 1878, transmitted to you, the depositions which ac- 

 companied Captain Sulivan's Report, and said : " In pointing out 

 that the American fishermen had broken the law within the territorial 

 limits of Her Majesty's domains, I had no intention of inferentially 

 laying down any principles of international law, and no advan- 

 tage would, I think, be gained by doing so to a greater extent 

 than the facts in question absolutely require. . . . Her Majesty's 

 Government will readily admit what is, indeed, self-evident, that 

 British sovereignty, as regards those waters, is limited in its scope 

 by the engagements of the Treaty of Washington, which cannot be 

 modified or affected by any municipal legislation." It is with the 

 greatest pleasure that the United States Government receives this 

 language as "the frank disavowal," which it asked, "of the para- 

 mount authority of provincial legislation to regulate the enjoyment 

 by our people of the inshore fishery." Removing, as this explicit 

 language does, the only serious difficulty which threatened to em- 

 barrass this discussion, I am now at liberty to resume the considera- 

 tion of these differences in the same spirit and with the same hopes 

 so fully and properly expressed in the concluding paragraph of Lord 

 Salisbury's despatch. He says, "It is not explicitly stated in Mr. 

 Evarts' despatch that he considers any recent Acts of the Colonial 

 Legislature to be inconsistent with the rights acquired by the United 

 States under the Treaty of Washington. But, if that is the case, 

 Her Majesty's Government will, in a friendly spirit, consider any 

 representations he may think it right to make upon the subject, with 

 the hope of coming to a satisfactory understanding." 



It is the purpose, therefore, of the present despatch to convey to 

 you, in order that they may be submitted to Her Britainnic Majesty's 

 {government, the conclusions which have been reached by the Govern- 

 ment of the United States as to the rights secured to its citizens, 

 under the Treaty of 1871, in the herring fishery upon the Newfound- 

 land coast, and the extent to which those rights have been infringed 

 by the transactions in Fortune Bay on January 6, 1878. 



Before doing so, however, I deem it proper, in order to clear the 

 argument of all unnecessary issues, to correct what I consider certain 

 misapprehensions of the views of this Government contained in Lord 

 Salisbury's despatch of 7th November, 1878. The Secretary for For- 

 eign Affairs of Her Britannic Majesty says: 



" If, however, it be admitted that the Newfoundland Legislature 

 have the right of binding Americans who fish within their waters 

 by any laws which do not contravene existing Treaties, it must be 

 further conceded that the duty of determining the existence of such 

 contravention must be undertaken by the Governments, and cannot be 

 remitted to the discretion of each individual fisherman. For such 

 discretion, if exercised on one side, can hardly be refused on the 

 other. If any American fisherman may violently break a law which 

 he believes to" be contrary to Treaty, a Newfoundland fisherman may 

 violently maintain it if he believes it to be in accordance with Treaty." 

 His Lordship can scarcely have intended this last proposition to 

 be taken in its literal significance. An infraction of law may be 



