914 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



" Section 1 of these Consolidated Statutes, to be found in the 

 United States Case Appendix at p. 175, exhibits this discrimination 

 to which I have referred : 



" ' No person shall haul, catch or take herrings by or in a seine 

 or other such contrivance, on or near any part of the coast of this 

 colony or its dependencies, or in any of the bays, harbours, or other 

 places therein, at any time between the twentieth day of October 

 in any year, and the eighteenth day of April in the following year, 

 or at any time use a seine or other contrivance for the catching or 

 taking of herring, except by way of shooting and forthwith hauling 

 the same, under a penalty not exceeding two hundred dollars: Pro- 

 vided that nothing herein contained shall prevent the taking of 

 herrings by nets set in the usual and customary manner, and not 

 used for in-barring or enclosing herrings in a cove, inlet or other 

 place. This section shall not apply to the coast of Labrador.' 



" Now the United States insists that that distinctly and clearly 

 gives an advantage to the shore fishermen over the boat fishermen 

 who, when they come there to fish, are compelled to conduct their 

 operations from their boats, and who cannot conduct their operations 

 in the peculiar manner by which the shore fishermen conduct theirs. 

 These nets ' set in the usual and customary manner ' I imagine that 

 what they are is clear to the apprehension of everybody who has 

 ever been around the sea where fishing is carried on, without calling 

 any expert to determine what it is. They are nets set out from the 

 shore, anchored to the ground, with floats which keep them from 

 sinking, in which the fish come along in their natural course through 

 the water and entangle themselves and are thereby caught. That 

 is ' the usual and customary manner ' in which the herring are taken, 

 as I understand it, by the local fishermen upon those shores. Under 

 the theory of the American right there, which has been rigidly 

 prescribed against them, they have no right to use the shores for 

 any purpose whatever. They cannot anchor their nets there; they 

 must conduct their fisheries from their boats, and with a seine, with 



which only a boat fishery can be conducted. 



545 " Here we see in this provision to which I call the attention 

 of the Tribunal, a prohibition against the catching of these 

 herrings by seine or any other similar contrivance, between these 

 extremely extended periods, and a proviso that nothing shall be con- 

 strued to prevent the taking of herrings in nets set ' in the usual and 

 customary manner' that is, by the usual and customary manner of 

 shore fishing, a provision which strikes me as exhibiting in the very 

 clearest light the discriminatory character of the legislation to which 

 the American fishermen have been and are subjected by the laws of 

 Newfoundland. 



" This discrimination against the American fishermen is further 

 illustrated by a consideration of sections 4 and 5 of these same 

 Statutes." 



I shall not trouble the Court with those at present; I may have 

 to refer to them later. 



For the present I will confine my observations to those parts of 

 the learned counsel's address which relate to seines as distinguished 

 from nets. He says: 



