2090 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



or manner, and upon a consideration of the use in that exercise of 

 the very methods of taking fish which are denounced by the laws of 

 Newfoundland. So that the award, based upon those computations, 

 must necessarily have been based upon an error of law if it had 

 turned out that Great Britain was contending that the American 

 fishermen, under the treaty of 1871, could not use methods or exer- 

 cise that full scope of their industry, which would appear to be pos- 

 sible under the terms of the treaty, and which was counted upon and 

 made the basis of the computation. As Mr. Evarts pointed out, the 

 very law of Newfoundland which prohibits the winter fishery, that 

 is, this Act of 1862 prohibiting seining from the 20th October to 

 April, would, if applied, exclude our people from the winter fishery, 

 which was one of the principal things that entered into the compu- 

 tation of the counsel for Great Britain before the Halifax Commis- 

 sion. They were put in the position, by Lord Salisbury's first view, 

 that they had got an award based upon the right to carry on a 

 profitable industry in Newfoundland, and then, before the award 

 was made, came the proposition that, by the law of Newfoundland, 

 American fishermen were prevented from doing that very thing. 



I must now trouble your Honours by returning again to the For- 

 tune Bay correspondence, because my former reference to it was 

 only for a specific purpose, and it has an important bearing upon 

 the matter that I am now presenting. 



The Tribunal will remember that American fishermen in 1878, 

 some twenty odd vessels, went into Fortune Bay for the purpose of 

 catching fish. They went ashore, and were drawing their seines, and 

 the inhabitants came and interfered with them, and there was a good 

 deal of disturbance, and finally some of the nets were cut and the 

 fish already taken were let out, and there was a claim for damages 

 by the United States. To that claim for damages Lord Salisbury 

 replied with a refusal, saying that they were violating three distinct 

 laws of the colony. Thereupon Mr. Evarts, who was smarting a 

 little under what we regarded in the United States as being a very 

 excessive award on the part of the Halifax Commission, an award of 

 5.500,000 dollars that the United States was called upon to pay for 

 the privileges under the treaty of 1871, wrote very promptly regard- 

 ing the observation by Lord Salisbury about the three distinct vio- 

 lations of law, and I now read this from p. 655 of the United St:i it- 

 Case Appendix, because it is the matter to which Lord Salisbury 

 makes answer in his subsequent letter. Mr. Evarts says, beginning 

 with the third paragraph on this p. 655 : 



" In this observation of Lord Salisbury, this government cannot 

 fail to see a necessary implication that frer Majesty's Government 

 conceives that in the prosecution of the right of fishing accorded to 

 the United States by Article XVIII of the treaty our fishermen are 



