122 The Frederick G erring, Jr. 



there must be overwlielming and absolutely conclusive considera- 

 tions. But no considerations at all — not even unwarrantable ones 

 — are forthcoming. Why do violence to the mother tongue and 

 shock the intelligence of the ordinary English student, why give 

 aid and comfort to those profane babblers who reiterate the fiction 

 that judicial tribunals are accustomed deliberately to defeat the 

 legislative intent by constructive canons of their own devising, in 

 order to give immunity to a vessel engaged in a business that, 

 according to present light and present scientific knowledge, may be 

 characterized as nefarious, a business, the tendency of which is to 

 annihilate for all time the fish-food supply of this continent, a 

 business, too, which, so far as Canadian waters are concerned has 

 been prohibited and criminalized?^ We Canadians are in a sense 

 the world's trustees. The North American fisheries have been 

 committed to our guardianship, not for ourselves alone, but for 

 posterity; not for Canada alone, but for humanity. They are the 

 most prolific in the world. One can only imagine, he cannot 

 measure, their potentiality of blessing to mankind, and the Cana- 

 dian Parliament has recognized its obligation to conserve them 

 for the benefit of future generations. That is the declared policy 

 of the Canadian people, and that too is the desire and the proposed 

 policy (so far as I am informed) of the United States Govern- 

 ment. Purse seining is inimical to that policy. It means, not a 

 reasonable use of, or participation in, the deep sea fisheries or their 

 natural annual increment, not their preserva'tion, but their anni- 

 hilation, their absolute destruction for all time; in familiar words, 

 "the killing of the goose that lays the golden egg." The history 

 of the United States fisheries on the Atlantic seaboard proves this, 

 and it was the conviction of it that induced our Parliament, as a 

 partial remedy, to pass the Act of 1891, above referred to. To 

 allow this vessel to escape would be to that extent to defeat the 

 beneficent preservative policy of the Canadian Parliament as evi- 

 denced by the statute, as well as to point out a way by which in 

 many cases its penal consequences might be avoided. Nothing 

 but overmastering considerations would justify that. 



There is another ground upon which the judgment appealed 

 from may be supported. Neither the Imperial statute, nor the 



I'See "Fisheries Amendment Act, 1891," 54 aud 55 Vict, ch., 43. 



