2136 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



agreement. There may be some specific and definite question that 

 we will have to leave out to somebody, that we will have to get an 

 opinion upon, but rather for the purpose of backing us up in making 

 an agreement than for any other reason. There is no reason why, if 

 we had this line of right settled, we should not take up the subject 

 of general regulations just where Lord Bathurst and Mr. Adams left 

 off. When Lord Bathurst proposed and our Government accepted 

 the proposition that there should be joint regulations it was, as you 

 will remember, pushed aside by the alternative of pushing us aside 

 to the wild and unsettled coast, where there was not any real use 

 of going on with the subject of joint regulations. There is no reason 

 why we should not take it up, but for this difficulty of Great Britain 

 in dealing with a colony that is sure to be extreme, without having 

 any definite line of right upon which to deal with it 



That there is no obstacle to regulations if both parties know what 

 they are entitled to is quite clear from the way in which countries 

 about this sea live under the joint regulations of the North Sea 

 Fishery. There is no reason why this should not be done as well as 

 Great Britain and France, for so many years bitter enemies, have 

 been able to make their regulations under the treaty of 1839, to make 

 joint regulations in so far as they were concerned between each other 

 under the treaty of 1857, which contained an elaborate scheme of 

 joint regulation for the Newfoundland coast, but which was re- 

 jected by Newfoundland, and as at last they have done under their 

 treaty of 1904, which was finally accepted by Newfoundland. 



You will remember that in 1889 Lord Knutsford wrote to Gov- 

 ernor O'Brien, of Newfoundland, when the colony had been par- 

 ticularly insistent upon its very extreme views of its own rights 

 and convenience: 



" There is no reasonable ground on which the Government of New- 

 foundland can object to the introduction into that colony of Regula- 

 tions similar to those which the Governments interested in the ^orth 

 Sea fisheries have agreed upon as best calculated to insure proper 

 police and to prevent the occurrence of disputes among rival fisher- 

 men." 



That is dated the 31st May, 1889, and is found in the United States 

 Counter-Case Appendix, p. 325. He says that there is no reasonable 

 ground. The only obstacle lies in the fact that Great Britain has no 

 measure of control over Newfoundland except her own will, and 

 Newfoundland would naturally resent any restraint on what she 

 believes to be necessary for her prosperity at the mere uncontrolled 

 will of the mother country. If you give a clear, definite line of right, 

 such as we are contending for, all that difficulty is obviated. 



There would be no trouble with the United States. We have here, 

 and I have already referred to it, an Act of the Congress of the 



