DESPATCHES, EEPOETS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 833 



observation is applicable to the situation created by the existence of 

 American fishing rights under the Treaty of 1818. An appeal to 

 the general jurisdiction of Great Britain over the territory is, there- 

 fore, a complete begging of the question, which always must be, not 

 whether the jurisdiction of the Colony authorizes a law limiting the 

 exercise of the Treaty right, but whether the terms of the grant 

 authorize it. 



The distinguished writer just quoted observes in the same letter: 



The Government of France each year during the fishing season employs ships 

 of war to superintend the fishery exercised by their countrymen, and, in conse- 

 quence of the divergent views entertained by the two Governments respectively 

 as to the interpretation to be placed upon the Treaties, questions of jurisdiction 

 which might at any moment have become serious have repeatedly arisen. 



The practice thus described, and which continued certainly until 

 as late as the modification of the French fishing rights in the year 

 1904. might well have been followed by the United States, and prob- 

 ably would have been, were it not that the desire to avoid such ques- 

 tions of jurisdiction as were frequently arising between the French 

 and the English has made this Government unwilling to have recourse 

 to such a practice so long as the rights of its fishermen can be pro- 

 tected in any other way. 



The Government of the United States regrets to find that His 

 Majesty's Government has now taken a much more extreme position 

 than that taken in the last active correspondence upon the same ques- 

 tion arising under the provisions of the Treaty of Washington. In 

 his letter of the 3rd April, 1880, to the American Minister in London, 

 Lord Salisbury said: 



In my note to Mr. Welsh of the 7th November, 1878, I stated that " British 

 sovereignty as regards these waters, is limited in scope by the engagements of 

 the Treaty of Washington, which cannot be modified or affected by any munici- 

 pal legislation," and Her Majesty's Government fully admit that United States' 

 fishermen have the right of participation on the Newfoundland inshore fisheries:, 

 in common with British subjects, as specified in Article XVIII of that Treaty. 

 But it cannot be claimed, consistently with this right of participation in common 

 with the British fishermen, that the United States' fishermen have any other, 

 and still less that they have any greater, rights than the British fishermen had 

 at the date of the Treaty. 



If, then, at the dale of the signature of the Treaty of Washington certain 

 restraints were, by the municipal law, imposed upon the British fishermen, the 

 United States' fishermen were, by the express terms of the Treaty, equally sub- 

 jected to those restraints and the obligation to observe in common with the 

 British the then existing local laws and regulations, which is implied by the 

 words " in common," attached to the United States' citizens as soon as they 

 claimed the benefit of the Treaty. 



Under the view thus forcibty expressed, 'the British Government 

 would be consistent in claiming that all regulations and limitations 

 upon the exercise of the right of fishing upon the Newfoundland 

 coast, which were in existence at the time when the Treaty of 1818 

 was made, are now binding upon American fishermen. 



Farther than this, His Majesty's Government cannot consistently 

 go, and, farther than this, the Government of the United States 

 cannot go. 



For the claim now asserted that the Colony of Newfoundland is 

 entitled at will to regulate the exercise of the American Treaty right 

 is equivalent to a claim of power to completely destroy that right. 

 This Government is far from desiring that the Newfoundland fish- 

 eries shall go unregulated. It is willing and ready now, as it has 

 92909 S. Doc. 870, 61^3, vol 4 63 



