472 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



same month on the same subject, has the honour to lay before the 

 President the correspondence as called for. 



In connection with these papers and for the better understanding 

 of the subject to which this correspondence relates, I submit for your 

 consideration the valuable Report of Collector F. J. Babson and 

 Alfred D. Foster, Esq., of their visit on board the naval steamship 

 Kearsarge to the provincial inshore fisheries, under the instructions 

 of the Department, during the summer of last year, as well as their 

 instructions under which this cruise of the Kearsarge was planned. 

 This correspondence with the British Government and this intelli- 

 gent exposition of the attempted exercise by our fishermen of the 

 freedom of the inshore fisheries as secured to them by the Treaty of 

 Washington, whose violent interruption gave occasion to this discus- 

 sion between the two Governments of the true measure of this Treaty 

 right, will, it is believed, with the record of the proceedings of the 

 Halifax Commission and the correspondence and protest which pre- 

 ceded and attended our payment of the Award, furnish com- 

 281 plete materials upon which the judgment of Congress can be 

 formed and its action determined in the juncture of this 

 fishery contention now demanding its serious consideration. 



The very grave occurrence at Fortune Bay in January, 1878. was 

 brought by me to the attention of the British Government in March 

 of that year with the view of obtaining redress for our fishermen for 

 the gross violence and serious loss they suffered in their expulsion 

 from this inshore fishery which they were prosecuting under the 

 Treaty of Washington. The reply of the British Government did 

 not reach me until September 4th of that year. It disclosed possible 

 grounds for the rejection of our claims which put upon our rights 

 in the inshore fisheries such limitations of subserviency to British 

 provincial or Imperial legislation as seemed to me wholly inad- 

 missible. These grounds were that our fishermen were pursuing 

 their industry on Sunday contrary to a law of Newfoundland passed 

 subsequent to the Treaty of Washington ; that they were using seines 

 to take herring contrary to a law of Newfoundland proscribing that 

 method of fishing for the six months of the year between October and 

 April; that they were using such seines in a manner prohibited at 

 any season of the year by a Statute which precluded catching herrings 

 by means of seines " except by way of shooting and forthwith haul- 

 ing the same." 



In communicating the Report of the evidence which was intended 

 to show the time and manner at and in which our fishermen were 

 pursuing their right, as a justification for their interruption in it. 

 Lord Salisbury observed : " You will perceive that the Report in 

 question appears to demonstrate conclusively that the United States 

 fishermen on this occasion had committed three distinct breaches of 

 the law." To this intimation, even, that the freedom of the fishery, 

 accorded by an Imperial Treaty, either had been subtracted by past t 

 or could be curtailed by future, provincial legislation, I lost no time in 

 opposing an explicit and unconditional rejection of such an inter- 

 pretation of the Treaty. In a despatch to Mr. Welsh on the 28th of 

 September, I communicated to the British Government the views of 

 this Government, as follows : 



