1764 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



on grounds of public order that people underselling the wages gen- 

 erally should be excluded from all sorts of industry ? 



SIR W. lloBSON : I should not like to put it on that ground, Sir. I 

 should not like to say to anybody, to the most humble State in the 

 most backward part of the world : " I am keeping you out on the 

 grounds of public order and morals." 



THE PRESIDENT : I would not speak of morals but on grounds of 

 public order. 



SIR W. ROBSON : The best thing is to be in a position to tell the 

 truth in such a case. The real truth would be : " We do not want 

 you." It would not be on grounds of public order. There would be 

 no question of public order. Some of the excluded races are ex- 

 cluded because they are so orderly. That is why we exclude some of 

 them. For instance, take the humble Briton who wants his linen 

 well washed. He may very well have to leave persons of his own 

 colour in order to find a really efficient laundress or laundryman, and 

 when the laundryman is told that he may not come in, it is not 

 because he is a disorderly person; it is because he washes so well and 

 washes so cheaply. 



I should not like to force Newfoundland into the position of un- 

 real or evasive excuses. I do not think a nation should be compelled 

 to give any excuse. If it chooses to say : " I won't have foreigners 

 of a particular class," it should be allowed to say so, without reasons. 

 It is much better that it should. It is bad enough to be excluded 

 from a friendly territory, or a neighbour's house, but I would rather 

 be told shortly and merely that I am excluded from my neighbour's 

 house than be told why. I think, on the whole, that if he is to exer- 

 cise his sovereign rights he had better exercise them as sovereign 

 rights, without any very intimate amount of personal explanation. 

 And in these days, when the population of the world is becoming so 

 fluid, is moving with such rapidity into new territories, any new 

 nation may find it necessary to deal with some laws in an exclusive 

 spirit. I am not suggesting that that is right. The United States 

 has set an example which has earned it the gratitude of mankind in 

 the splendid I was going to say imperial, but I dare say they would 

 object to that word in the superb, imperial generosity with which 

 it has welcomed the world at its gates, and made new nations there 

 containing composite elements from all the races of the older world. 

 But it also is beginning to find that it must put some limits upon its 

 generosity. And you may have at any time, even in a little State like 

 Newfoundland,- the desire or necessity to say : " We must be careful 

 here. We are making a new race, a new nation, and we must be 

 careful of the elements that we admit into the making of this people 

 of the future." Therefore the right of exclusion is no ungenerous 

 right. It is not a sordid, selfish right. It is one which every natio* 



