DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 473 



In this observation of Lord Salisbury this Government cannot fail to see a 

 necessary implication that Her Majesty's Government conceives that in the 

 prosecution of the right of fishing accorded to the United States by Article 18 

 of the Treaty our fishermen are subject to the local Regulations which govern 

 the coast population of Newfoundland in their prosecution of their fishing 

 industry, whatever those Regulations may be, and whether enacted before or 

 since the Treaty of Washington. 



The three particulars in which our fisherman are supposed to be constrained 

 by actual legislation of the province cover in principle, every degree of regu- 

 lation of our fishing industry within the three-mile line which can well be 

 conceived. But they are, in themselves, so important and so serious a limita- 

 tion of the rights secured by the Treaty as practically to exclude our fishermen 

 from any profitable pursuit of the right, which, I need not add, is equivalent to 

 annulling or canceling by the Provincial Government the privilege accorded by 

 the Treaty with the British Government. 



If our fishing fleet is subject to the Sunday laws of Newfoundland, made for 

 the coast population ; if it is excluded from the fishing grounds for half the 

 year, from October to April ; if our " seines and other contrivances " for catch- 

 ing fish are subject to the Regulations of the Legislature of Newfoundland, it 

 is not easy to see what firm or valuable measure for the privilege of Article 18, 

 as conceded to the United States, this Government can promise to its citizens 

 under the guarantee of the Treaty. 



It would not, under any circumstances, be admissible for one Government 

 to subject the persons, the property, and the interests of its fishermen to the 

 unregulated regulation of another Government upon the suggestion that such 

 authority will not be oppressively or capriciously exercised, nor would any Gov- 

 ernment accept as an adequate guarantee of the proper exercise of such author- 

 ity over its citizens by a foreign Government, that, presumptively, regulations 

 would be uniform in their operation upon the subjects of both Governments 

 in a similar case. If there are to be regulations of a common enjoyment they 

 must be authenticated by a common or joint authority. 



But most manifestly the subject of the regulation of the enjoyment of the 

 shore fishery by the resident provincial population, and of the inshore fishery 

 by our fleet of fishing cruisers, does not tolerate the control of so divergent and 

 competing interests by the domestic legislation of the provinces. Protecting 

 and nursing the domestic interest at the expense of the foreign interest, on 

 the ordinary motives of human conduct, necessarily shape and animate the local 

 legislation. The evidence before the Halifax Commission makes it obvious that 

 to exclude our fishermen from catching bait, and thus compel them to go with- 

 out bait, or buy bait at the will and price of the provincial fishermen, is the 

 interest of the local fishermen, and will be the guide and motive of such domes- 

 tic legislation as is now brought to the notice of this Government. 



You will, therefore, say to Lord Salisbury that this Government cannot but 

 express its entire dissent from the view of the subject that his Lordship's note 

 seems to indicate. This Government conceives that the fishery rights of the 

 United States, conceded by the Treaty of Washington, are to be exercised 

 wholly free from the restraints and regulations of the Statutes of Newfound- 

 land, now set up as authority over our fishermen, and from any other regula- 

 tions of fishing now in force or that may hereafter be enacted by that Gov- 

 ernment. 



It may be said that a just participation in this common fishery by the two 



parties entitled thereto may, in the common interest of preserving the fishery 



and preventing conflicts between the fishermen, require regulation by some 



competent authority. This may be conceded. But should such occasion present 



itself to the common appreciation of the two Governments, it need not be said 



that such competent authority can only be found in a joint Convention that 



shall receive the approval of Her Majesty's Government and our own. 



282 Until this arrangement shall be consummated, this Government must 



regard the pretension that the legislation of Newfoundland can regulate 



our fishermen's enjoyment of the Treaty right as striking at the Treaty itself. 



It asserts an authority on one side, and a submission on the other, which has 

 not been proposed to us by Her Majesty's Government and has not been accepted 

 by this Government. I cannot doubt that Lord Salisbury will agree that the 

 insertion of any such element in the Treaty of Washington would never have 

 been accepted by this Government, if it could reasonably be thought possible 

 that it could have been proposed by Her Majesty's Government. The insertion 



