496 MISCELLANEOUS 



the approval of the Crown, and also through His Majesty's Govern- 

 ment allowing the Americans privileges not possessed under treaty. 



Am I to be told that under the Treaty of 1 818 Americans are ex- 

 empt from our local laws? If so, I deny it. I deny it upon the 

 authority of those great American statesmen who fifty years ago gave 

 it as an instruction to Americans exercising treaty rights on our coast 

 " that the laws of this colony are as obligatory upon the citizens of 

 the United States as upon our own people." 



I deny it upon the authority of the late Sir John Thompson, states- 

 man and lawyer, one of the ablest men that the Dominion of Canada 

 has produced, who declared that " the efforts made on the part of the 

 Government of the United States to deny and refute the validity of 

 colonial statutes on the subject of the fisheries have been continued 

 for many years, but in every instance have been set at nought by the 

 imperial authorities and by the judicial tribunals." 



I deny it upon the authority of the law officers of the Crown, 

 Messrs. W. Atherton and Roundell Palmer, who on the 16th of Janu- 

 ary, 1863, declared as follows: 



" That in our opinion inhabitants of the United States, fishing 

 within waters in the territorial jurisdiction of the legislature of New- 

 foundland, are bound to obey and are legally punishable for disre- 

 garding the laws and regulations of the fisheries enacted by or under 

 the authority of the provincial legislature. The plain object of the 

 treaties above referred to was to put the inhabitants of the United 

 States as regards the ' liberty to take fish ' within the parts described 

 of the British dominions on the same footing as ' subjects of His 

 Britannic Majesty,' * in common with whom,' under the terms of the 

 treaty, such liberty was to be enjoyed. The enactments subsequently 

 passed would not confirm the treaties and provide for the suspension 

 during the operation of those treaties of such laws, etc., as were or 

 would be inconsistent with the terms and spirit of the treaty, which 

 ' terms and spirit ' are, it appears to us, in no respect violated by the 

 regulations bona -fide made by the government for the conduct of the 

 fishery and applicable to British subjects so employed." 



I would also point out that by the conventions of 1890 and 1902 it 

 was provided that Americans should only be subject to our customs 

 and revenue laws and to such regulations as governed our local fish- 

 ermen. Therefore, by necessary implication, these treaties concede 

 the right of this colony to subject United States fishing vessels to our 

 municipal law. 



If for reasons that do not appear to us it was necessary to give way 

 to the demands of the American Government, then ministers of the 

 Crown in this colony should have been fully and frankly apprised 

 of this fact and have been invited to repeat what they did last vear 

 at the instance of His Majesty's Government, viz, to refrain from 

 enforcing the law. If we had declined to do this then it would have 

 been within the competency of the Imperial Parliament, which is 

 supreme throughout the Realm, on being satisfied of its necessity, to 

 have suspended the law, but the course adopted by His Majesty's 

 Ministers was most humiliating and unjust to the people of this 

 colony, as well as a menace to every colony possessing responsible 

 government. What we desire what we expect is a strict interpre- 

 tation of the Treaty of 1818. No allusion is made in that treaty to 

 the laws of nations as furnishing canons for its interpretation, and 



