APPENDICES TO ORAL ARGUMENTS. 2363 



the same time the interests of justice and the legitimate suscepti- 

 bility of the authorities in question. 



Lord Salisbury, interposes the Declaration of King George, wherein 

 it is said that the English sovereign will take " the most positive 

 measures for preventing his subjects from interrupting in any man- 

 ner, by their competition, the fishery of the French during the tem- 

 porary exercise of it which is granted to them upon the coasts of the 

 island of Newfoundland." 



But wherein does this engagement to cause our rights to be re- 

 spected withdraw from us the right to assure ourselves of their en- 

 joyment? From the moment that there was imparted to French 

 sovereignty a property, an active servitude in English territory, it 

 required an express and formal text to stipulate that this sovereignty 

 should be deprived of the right to police its grant and defend it. 

 Now this text does not exist and the promise of the cooperation of 

 King George does not make good its absence. 



Further, the English Government itself has very explicitly recog- 

 nized that it does not find itself as against us within the w r aters of the 

 French shore upon the footing in which a sovereign State is placed 

 with reference to a foreigner. I read, in fact, in a letter addressed 

 under date the 12th June, 1884, by Lord Derby to Sir J. H. Glover, 

 Governor of Newfoundland, regarding the project of a convention 

 then under discussion, in which our right of police over English 

 vessels at Newfoundland was expressly established. I read, I say, 

 this characteristic phrase : " The stipulations of the North Sea Con- 

 vention" (the Minister alludes to The Hague Convention, in which 

 the right of police was reciprocally stipulated) " no doubt 

 1425 apply to waters which are not territorial; still the peculiar 

 fisheries rights granted by treaties to the French in Newfound- 

 land invest these waters during the months of the year when fishing 

 is carried on in them both by English and French fishermen with a 

 character somewhat analogous to that of a common sea for the pur- 

 poses of fishery." 



Before and after this phrase Lord Derby describes this treaty right 

 recognised by the project of convention as a new privilege, but he is 

 none the less obliged to recognise in the passage which I have just 

 quoted that English and French find themselves along the French 

 shore in quasi common waters and not at all within a region having 

 all the characteristics of territoriality. The analogy with common 

 waters is, moreover, inexact. No person has a privileged right in 

 common waters. While we have a right of exclusion within New- 

 foundland waters it would therefore be more in conformity with the 

 truth to say that the maritime zone which washes the French shore 

 is analogous to French territorial waters. 



Finally, we cannot subscribe to the thesis of Lord Salisbury, and 

 he, in our place, would certainly not subscribe to it. Our right is to 

 exploit the French shore and not to be interfered with by competi- 

 tion. We have the right to prevent the interference since we have the 

 right not to submit to it. And if by deference and courtesy we invite 

 English cruisers to take action we cannot admit that they contest 

 its object, because this would be to contest our right itself in subject- 

 ing it to a determination upon which it no longer depends. [Livre 

 Jaune, 1891, Affaires de Terre-Neuve, pp. 329-331.] 



