ARGUMENT OF ELIHU ROOT. 2091 



subject to the local regulations which govern the coast population of 

 Newfoundland in their prosecution of their -fishing industry, what- 

 ever those regulations may be, and whether enacted before or since 

 the Treaty of Washington. 



" The three particulars in which our fishermen are supposed to be 



constrained by actual legislation of the province cover in principle 



every degree of regulation of our fishing industry within 



1265 the three-mile line which can well be conceived. But they are, 



in themselves, so important and so serious a limitation of the 



rights secured by the treaty as practically to exclude our fishermen 



from any profitable pursuit of the right, which, I need not add, is 



equivalent to annulling or cancelling by the Provincial Government 



of the privilege accorded by the treaty with the British Government. 



" If our fishing-fleet is subject to the Sunday laws of Newfound- 

 land, made for the coast population ; if it is excluded from the fish- 

 ing grounds for half the year, from October to April ; if our ' seines 

 and other contrivances ' for catching fish are subject to the regula- 

 tions of the legislature of Newfoundland, it is not easy to see what 

 firm or valuable measure for the privilege of Article XVIII, as con- 

 ceded to the United States, this government can promise to its citi- 

 zens under the guaranty of the treaty. 



" It would not, under any circumstances, be admissible for one 

 government to subject the persons, the property, and the interests of 

 its fishermen to the unregulated regulation of another government 

 upon the suggestion that such authority will not be oppressively or 

 capriciously exercised, nor would any government accept as an ade- 

 quate guaranty of the proper exercise of such authority over its citi- 

 zens by a foreign government, that, presumptively, regulations would 

 be uniform in their operation upon the subjects of both governments 

 in similar case. If there are to be regulations of a common enjoy- 

 ment, they must be authenticated by a common or joint authority." 



That is a clear, definite, and unequivocal statement of Mr. Evarts' 

 view. In closing the letter, in the last paragraph on page 657, he 

 says: 



" In the opinion of this Government it is essential that we should 

 at once invite the attention of Lord Salisbury to the question of pro- 

 vincial control over the fishermen of the United States in their 

 prosecution of the privilege secured to them by the treaty. So grave 

 a question, in its bearing upon the obligations of this Government 

 under the treaty, makes it necessary that the President should ask 

 from Her Majesty's Government a frank avowal or disavowal of the 

 paramount authority of Provincial legislation to regulate the enjoy- 

 ment l>y our people of the inshore fishery, which seems to be inti- 

 mated, if not asserted, in Lord Salisbury's note. 



" Before the receipt of a reply from Her Majesty's Government, 

 it would be premature to consider what should be the course of this 

 Government should this limitation upon the treaty privileges of the 

 United States be insisted upon by the British Government as their 

 construction of the treaty." 



And it is in answer to that demand that Lord Salisbury immedi-' 

 ately responds in his letter of the 7th November, 1878. It is in this 



