ARGUMENT OF SAMUEL J. ELDER. 1511 



MR. ELDER: I should suppose that would follow too, from the 

 statute. 



THE PRESIDENT : I think they say expressly that he must make an 

 affidavit that he is a citizen, and that he will not use his boat in the 

 interest of any person not a citizen. 



MR. ELDER: That was intended to preserve those prolific- waters, 

 from which so many delightful things come to us, for the benefit of 

 the people of their own State, just as they might preserve the hunt- 

 ing of their own State from attacks outside. 



When it comes to the question of the fisheries accorded by treaty to 

 the United States upon the shores of Newfoundland, the United 

 States has a somewhat similar right to determine in what way and in 

 what manner it will authorize that use. It might restrict it in one 

 way, or it might restrict it in another, but the power and right is in 

 United States to do it, and therefore it is the authorization of the 

 United States which is necessary even to enable an inhabitant of the 

 United States to exercise the treaty privilege. 



THE PRESIDENT: And if the fishing would be in the interest of a 

 foreigner, would that be considered by the United States as a fishing 

 under the treaty? 



MR. ELDER: It would not. 



THE PRESIDENT: You think it would not? 



MR. ELDER : I think it would not, if I apprehend the question cor- 

 rectly. The use of an American vessel, which had its authority, and 

 received that properly, to fish for a foreigner, would in my judgment 

 be outside the authorization of the country itself. You see I pointed 

 out earlier, on Tuesday I think, that the United States vessels, in 

 order to be registered, must be owned by the inhabitants of the United 

 States. If any single fraction of the vessel ceases to be owned by citi- 

 zens of the United States, if it is a sixty- fourth part, and those shares 

 are divided up into infinitesimal parts at times if it ceases to be 

 owned by citizens of the United States, thereupon the vessel ceases 

 to be entitled to registry, and if it is on register at that time, the 

 registry is not valid. 



I will call attention to those statutes a little further on. 



Mr. Root called attention in this letter of the 30th June, 1906, 

 at p. 978 to the interference with American vessels upon the New- 

 foundland coast: 



" The letter which I had the honour to address to the British Am- 

 bassador in Washington on the 19th October last stated with greater 

 detail the complaint in my letter to him of the 12th October, 1905, 

 to the effect that the local officers of Newfoundland had attempted 

 to treat American ships as such, without reference to the rights of 

 their American owners and officers, refusing to allow such ships sail- 

 ing under register to take part in the fishing on the treaty coast, 



