APPENDIX (K). 



Extracts from French Official Correspondence concerning the Nature 

 of the French Treaty Rights in Newfoundland. 



No. 110. Admiral Krantz, Minister of Marine, to M. Goblet, Minister 



of Foreign Affairs. 



PARIS, July 10, 1888. 



We have upon the French shore an absolute right of exploitation, 

 perhaps exclusive, which takes precedence over everything. The 

 English have, at the most, only a right ("faculte") of conditional 

 fishing and of tolerance. Their competition cannot trouble us nor 

 interrupt us. It should cease as soon as it affects us. Under these 

 conditions (and this point has never been, so far as I know, the ob- 

 ject of dispute) it is we who are the judges of the trouble and of the 

 interference, and when we establish their existence we have the right 

 to require that they be removed. To admit the contrary would be to 

 reverse the roles and to abandon the very principle of our right. 

 [Livre Jaune, 1891, Affaires de Terre-Neuve, p. 167.] 



M. Waddington, French Ambassador to Great Britain, to the Mar- 

 quis of Salisbury, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. 



LONDON, December 15, 1888. 



In any case, the British declaration says that . . . . " The Xlllth 

 Article of the Treaty of Utrecht, and the method of carrying on the 

 fishery, which at all times has been acknowledged, shall be the plan 

 upon which the fishery shall be carried on there: it shall not be 

 deviated from by either party; the French fishermen building only 

 their scaffolds, confining themselves to the repair of their fishing- 

 vessels, and not wintering there; the subjects of His Britannic Maj- 

 esty, on their part, not molesting in any manner the French fisher- 

 men during their fishing, nor injuring their scaffolds during their 

 absence." 



What is understood by " the method of carrying on the fishery " is 

 defined by the developments following this phrase in the text of the 

 declaration. It is the modus vivendi of the French on a coast which 

 has ceased to belong to them, which is regulated; it is their pro- 

 visional encampment, their right to cut wood necessary for their 

 small repairs, which is confirmed ; it is, in a word, the most thorough 

 commentary on the territorial rights of the British Crown in respect 

 of the temporary servitude (" servitude temporaire ") agreed to by 

 it. "The method of carrying on the fishery" signifies the interna- 

 tional police regulations which shall govern the relations of the fish- 

 ermen of the two nations, and an impartial examination precludes 



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