1972 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



Let me observe here that this provision in the regulations of 1891 

 which was discovered during the course of Sir Janies Winter's argu- 

 ment, and suggested to him, which he, with all his intimate knowledge 

 of the situation, did not know of, was there but one year. When the 

 Commissioner came to make up regulations in 1891, he changed the 

 old rule about nets on Sunday. The old rule was that they could not 

 set the nets on Sunday and they could not haul them on Sunday, but 

 there was nothing to prevent their being set on Saturday and left 

 there to work, like money at interest, while one slept, to work all day 

 Sunday catching fish, and let them be taken out on Monday. There 

 was nothing in the law to prevent that until 1891, when those new 

 regulations were made. And the Commissioner making the regula- 

 tions put in that the nets should not be left in the water over Sunday. 

 The next year it was taken out, and in these regulations now it does 

 not appear. They have gone back to the old law. 



The Sunday provision is a curious one in another way. That also. 

 you will observe, is subject to the exceptions of this controlling act 

 of 1884, which, notwithstanding any law to the contrary, gives the 

 Newfoundlander the right to take his bait at any time and in any 

 way. So that the Sunday provision applies only to bait, and dui-s 

 not apply to Newfoundlanders taking bait for the bank fishery, but 

 only to the persons who, as Bret Harte says in one of his stories of 

 life in a Western frontier village, are regarded by the inhabitants as 



having the defective moral quality of being foreigners. 

 1194 Then there is another interesting circumstance which you 

 will find by looking at paragraph 78 of these same 1908 regu- 

 lations, on page 209 of the American Case Appendix, at the end of 

 the page. This enlarges the Sunday prohibition, so that it applies 

 not merely to herring but to any bait fish : 



"No person shall betw r een the hours of twelve o'clock on Saturday 

 night and twelve o'clock on Sunday night, take or catch in any man- 

 ner whatsoever any herring, caplin, squid, or any other bait fish, or 

 set or put out any contrivance whatsoever for the purpose of taking 

 or catching herring, caplin, squid, or other bait fish. Caplin may l>e 

 taken for fertilising purposes by farmers or their employees during 

 the usual season." 



That is to say, when caplin come in such quantities that human 

 nature cannot stand it and the farmers can make good use of them, 

 they can take them on Sunday. But when the herring come in in 

 such quantities that American human nature cannot stand it. and 

 they see the opportunity to make their whole voyage profitable and 

 support for themselves and their families for the whole year to come, 

 by availing themselves of the opportunity, on the Sunday, American 

 human nature must conform itself to the Revised Statutes of New- 

 foundland. The Newfoundlanders are protecting themselves; they 



