492 MISCELLANEOUS 



(2) A demand from American fishermen that the people of this 

 colony engaged by them should use purse seines in the conduct of the 

 fishery in defiance of the statute law of the colony, which penalizes 

 the use of such seines ; and, 



(3) The government of this colony had refused to be consenting 

 parties to this proposed violation of the law. 



It was under these circumstances, then, that His Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment decided to execute an instrument intended to override the 

 decision of the legislature of this colony as well as the statute law of 

 the colony, and it is under such circumstances as these that the rights 

 which imperial or public expediency may be supposed to confer be- 

 come the most odious of all wrongs and the most vexatious of all 

 injustice. 



Viewing the question from either a constitutional, legal, or expedi- 

 ency standpoint, it is difficult to conceive how any justification can 

 be found for such an unexampled proceeding. If, however, for im- 

 perial or public reasons, which do not appear in the despatches, the 

 demands of the United States Government, on behalf of the fishermen, 

 had to be acceded to, then, I submit, justice required that the injury 

 and loss about to be inflicted upon the people of this colony should have 

 been provided for by a measure of compensation that would equalize 

 the tax imposed by the United States Government upon British fish 

 entering American markets. Had this course been pursued this 

 colony would have been spared the painful humiliation to which it has 

 been subjected and His Majesty's Government much adverse criticism 

 and no doubt embarrassment, for under such circumstances as these 

 this government would have felt themselves warranted in exercising 

 the powers conveyed to them by Parliament and have limited the 

 operation of the Bait Act for that season, so that it should not apply 

 in the case of those local fishermen who might elect to engage them- 

 selves to fish for the Americans. 



It has been exceedingly distasteful and painful to my colleagues 

 and myself to oppose the action of His Majesty's Government, and 

 it was only a firm belief in the truth of the maxim " He serves the 

 King best who directs his endeavors to the preservation of the rights 

 and privileges of the King's subjects " that nerved us for the per- 

 formance of the very unpleasant duty that developed upon us as 

 ministers of the Crown. We regard the modus vivendi as oppres- 

 sive, as well as subversive of the constitutional rights of His Maj- 

 esty's subjects in this colony. For us, therefore, to passively bear 

 with oppression committed within the radius of our jurisdiction 

 would be, in truth and reason, for this government to be an accom- 

 plice in the abuse. 



We have to realize in the first place that the enforcement of the 

 Bait Act against American fishermen, as it has been enforced against 

 French fishermen, is required by the people of this colony at the 

 hands of their representatives. The matter of a change in the policy 

 of the government of this colony towards American fishermen was 

 submitted to the people at the polls in my manifesto of 1904, and a 

 mandate was received from the people to effect that change. 



The law which we are required to enforce has been upon the stat- 

 ute book for nearly twenty years, and it was only relaxed for a time, 

 in the case of Americans, because the Government of the United 

 States of America had entered into a trade convention with His 



