AKGUMENT OF ELIHU BOOT. 1933 



But Mr. Marcy does not undertake to point out, indeed the situa- 

 tion did not call upon him to point out, what laws would be consistent 

 and what laws would be inconsistent with the treaty. 



I now beg to pass to a second instance which proceeded somewhat 

 further in drawing the line, and that is the letter of Lord Salisbury, 

 to which attention has so often been drawn, in his correspondence 

 with Mr. Evarts regarding Fortune Bay. 



THE PRESIDENT: May I ask you, Senator Root, whether you con- 

 sider that the following sentences in this circular have no bearing 

 upon the preceding sentences, the sentences : 



" Should they be so framed or executed as to make any discrimina- 

 tion in favour of the British fishermen, or to impair the rights secured 

 to American fishermen by the Reciprocity Treaty, those injuriously 

 affected by them will appeal to this Government for redress. In pre- 

 senting complaints of this kind, should there be cause for doing so, 

 they are requested to furnish the Department of State with a copy of 

 the law or regulation which is alleged injuriously to affect their rights 

 or to make an unfair discrimination " ? 



SENATOR ROOT: I do not consider, Mr. President, that they have 

 any bearing at all upon the precise proposition which I am now pre- 

 senting; that is to say, upon the existence of the line between what 

 Great Britain can do and what she cannot do. But they do have a 

 bearing upon another closely allied question, to which I shall turn my 

 attention in a moment, and that is the procedure which should fol- 

 low, and the method of determining, practically, the line, as matters 

 stood before this submission, before the making of the treaty of 

 arbitration, or this special agreement. They have a very important 

 bearing upon that. 



Lord Salisbury, the Tribunal will remember, became involved in 

 a correspondence with Mr. Evarts regarding the claim of the United 

 States for compensation for certain acts of violence which had been 

 done to American fishermen in Fortune Bay by the British fishermen 

 there. The claim having been made, the British Government an- 

 swered it in the manner which is ordinarily used in dealing with mere 

 claims, an answer not indicating special consideration, but such as 

 would naturally come from the claims department of a Foreign 

 Office, that this claim could not be allowed because the American 

 fishermen who suffered the injury were guilty of three distinct viola- 

 tions of the laws of Newfoundland; that they were on shore when 

 they had no right to be on shore; that they were in-barring herring 

 when the law prohibited it ; and that they were taking herring with 

 a seine during the period between October and May, when the statute 

 prohibited it. In response to that, Mr. Evarts called attention to the 

 fact that these laws were, in his view, not binding upon American 

 fishermen, and he said, in a letter of the 28th September, 1878, which 



