2360 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



the discovery of the least restriction on the method of fishing of the 

 French, or on the manner of preparing the fish, provided that the 

 French establishments preserve, as they do to-day, the character of 

 " temporary buildings possessed by the scaffold. [Blue Book, Cor- 

 respondence respecting the Newfoundland Fisheries, 1884-1890, pp. 

 192-193.] 



1423 No. 149. Admiral Krantz, Minister of Marine and Colonies, 

 to M. Sputter, Minister of Foreign Affairs. 



PARIS, October 15, 1889. 



I have received the report of the fishing season of the Commandant 

 of the Naval Division of Newfoundland. 



The two questions which are there mentioned as having a special 

 interest at the present moment are those of the lobster fishery and of 

 the policing of the fishery upon the French shore. 



Concerning the latter question, it has been admitted until now that 

 if an English cruiser was present we should demand from it the 

 removal of obstacles by which the Newfoundland fishermen could 

 disturb ours, but that when our cruisers were alone they should them- 

 selves suppress these obstacles. This manner of procedure reconciled 

 in a reasonable and proper manner for everybody our status of 

 usufructuary with the right of sovereignty of England, and we have 

 never demanded more. 



But the doctrine maintained by the new Commander of the Eng- 

 lish Division and the acts by which he supports it destroy this order 

 of things. This would mean, according to Admiral Walker, that 

 English property could not be interfered with by our cruisers. 



This new state of affairs would create in our station an inaccept- 

 able condition, while at the same time it would unsettle the condi- 

 tions of the enjoyment of our rights. If, although proprietors as- 

 sured of the right of not being disturbed in our fishing industry in 

 Newfoundland, we are, however, no longer the judges of what is an 

 interference with us; if the British cruiser present alone determines 

 for itself the question of interference and removes it according to its 

 judgment; if, finally, in the absence of the English cruiser it is the 

 transgressor who is obliged to judge and condemn himself, I ask 

 what substantial and important right remains to us of those so for- 

 mally guaranteed by the treaties and the Royal declarations of the 

 last century. It is evident that our rights, not to be illusory, admit 

 of another sanction, and that in exercising, as they claim to do up to 

 the most extreme limit, the power of superior police and of execu- 

 tion which we have abandoned to them to the present rather by 

 courteous deference and in a spirit of conciliation than to subject 

 ourselves to a legal obligation, the English officers exceed the bounds 

 of propriety and violate our rights. If it is necessary to revert to 

 principles and to apply them rigorously, which might perhaps be dis- 

 agreeable, but to which the new English course of action constrains 

 us, we may say that it is not right that a sovereignty be subjected to 

 the mere pleasure of another sovereignty upon which it is not de- 

 pendent; in the enjoyment and preservation of a certain right in 

 which another nation has no share; that since we are invested with 

 an incontestable and uncontested right of fishing freely without be- 



