916 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



local use of the inhabitants on all this coast with a positive provision 

 against their being taken at any period of the year by seines upon 

 the American and the French fishery coasts which commence approxi- 

 mately at the commencement of the American coast on the south 

 coast of Newfoundland and extend to the point where the French 

 fishery began under their treaty with Great Britain." 



Then there is a section regarding Sunday catching which I pass 

 over because it does not affect the immediate point, and then he con- 

 cludes at the foot of p. 2852 [p. 468, supra] : 



" Experts have a great many ideas upon this subject, but that is a 

 novel idea to me and I think that the explanation of this provision 

 with reference to herring is to be found, not in this idea suggested 



by Sir Robert, but in the fact of the peculiar manner in which 

 546 local fishermen carry on their fishery by fixed nets set out from 



the shore. They naturally want to go and visit their homes 

 on Sunday." 



Here learned counsel mixes up the question of Sunday fishing, as 

 I respectfully submit, with the other question as to whether it is 

 necessary to make this regulation against the use of seines, and to 

 forbid fishing on Sunday on account of its effects upon the fishery. 

 He continues : 



" Here are these fixed nets catching fish all the time for them. 

 While they are observing Sunday their nets are working just as hard 

 as ever they were and they do not want any other fishermen to come 

 around and disturb these nets. That is the explanation of the pro- 

 hibition against Sunday fishing and the hardship of making Ameri- 

 can fishermen, whose families are across the sea and whose return to 

 their families is thus prolonged, conform to this, as a convenience to 

 local fishermen, is so obvious, to say nothing of the chance of the 

 failure to which such interference subjects the fishing ventures. 

 Upon this subject the Tribunal has only to turn to this Fortune Bay 

 incident where it is stated explicitly that by virtue of the interference 

 with the right to take this school of herring which had come into 

 Fortune Bay on Sunday, the vessels were compelled to return to the 

 United States without any catch of fish whatever, this fish being 

 elusive, going into particular places at their own pleasure and not 

 observing Sunday like we do, and when they go in there it being 

 necessary to take them or not take them at all at that time." 



Now, Mr. President, in making these observations, the learned 

 counsel must have left upon the mind of any person who listened to 

 him the impression, although he did not state it in so many words, 

 that large seines were used, on one side, by the American and that, 

 on the other side, nets the smaller article catching fish in smaller 

 quantities, were used by the people from the shore ; that the nets that 

 he speaks of were fixed from the shore and, therefore, that only New- 

 foundland fishermen could use them; and, secondly, that the New- 

 foundland fishermen did not use seines. The general impression 

 that was left from his observations, I think, was that this was a dis- 



