308 MISCELLANEOUS 



In previous negotiations the subject of fixed establishments received 

 the earnest consideration of the British negotiators, and it was, on 

 more than one occasion, contemplated to appoint Mixed Commissions 

 to assess the amount of compensation which should be paid to the 

 owners of property whose buildings were to be removed. 



However desirable such a course might have been, great difficulty 

 would probably have been experienced in carrying it into effect, and 

 it might have given rise to many vexatious and complicated questions. 



No such inconvenience can result under the very satisfactory pro- 

 vision of the present arrangement dealing with this branch of the 

 subject. 



In return for the advantages to the Colony above enumerated, Her 

 Majesty's Government would, under the present Arrangement, recog- 

 nize little more than the de facto state of things existing as regards 

 the acts of authority exercised every fishing season by the French 

 cruizers in the waters over which the French Treaty rights extend, 

 and the exercise of these acts on the part of French cruizers would 

 only take place in cases of infraction of the very reasonable provisions 

 of this Arrangement, and then only in the absence of any of Her 

 Majesty's cruizers. 



I may here observe that a Convention, a copy of which is inclosed, 

 was signed in 1881 at The Hague by the Repiesentatives of certain 

 Maritime Powers for the regulation of the fisheries in the North Sea. 

 This Convention contains very useful provisions for the orderly 

 prosecution of the fisheries in common by fishermen of different 

 nationalities, and some of its provisions have been considered appli- 

 cable to the case of the Newfoundland fisheries. 



The stipulations of the North Sea Convention no doubt apply to 

 waters which are not territorial, still the peculiar fisheries rights 

 granted by Treaties to the French in Newfoundland invest those 

 waters during the months of the year when fishing is carried on in 

 them both by English and French fishermen with a character some- 

 what analogous to that of a common sea for the purposes of fishery. 

 It could not be expected that the French would give up in favour of 

 the development of the Colony the interpretation they place on the 

 Treaties, without obtaining in return some equivalent by which they 

 will in the future be better able to secure for their fishermen the full 

 enjoyment of their fishing industry, and it appears to Her Majesty's 

 Government that little inconvenience is likely to result from the 

 exercise of the limited right accorded to French cruizers by the 

 present Arrangement. 



The French Government have invariably maintained that the estab- 

 lishment of a fixed population on any portions of the coast on which 

 they enjoy Treaty rights must result in their ultimate exclusion from 

 those spots, through French fishermen being virtually debarred from 

 enjoying the free and uninterrupted exercise of the fishery rights 

 accorded to them; and they instance the cases of the Bay of St. 

 George on the west coast and of Conche on the east coast, where such 

 a condition of affairs has arisen. 



In agreeing, therefore, to the opening of all those extensive por- 

 tions of the coast tinted red on the Map to a fixed population, the 

 French Government naturally, and, in the opinion of Her Majesty's 

 Government, not unreasonably, ask in return that they may be enabled 



