BAIT-FISH — EXPANSION — AND CONFLICT 225 



possible questions which might arise under the Treaties, and 

 it was doubtful whether any arbitration would ever take place. 

 France, moreover, was alarmed at the temporary character 

 of the colonial laws sanctioning the viodus and shelved the 

 agreement for arbitration. 



Doubtless the anti-bait laws crippled French fishermen on In 1904 

 the south coast ; but in the end the natural law, which almost i^^f^^^^g 

 seemed invariable in the history of the colony, that stationary Cordiale ' 

 multitudes oust visitors from afar, asserted itself, and once ^f^fJtfe7 

 more settled industry and numbers prevailed. Settlers on the and France 

 Treaty shore increased to 17,234 in 1901, and the harassed ^'ker^ Treaty 

 Bretons dwindled. Finally, in 1904, a way out of all these rights. 

 difficulties was found, and the long entanglements caused by 

 mutual and palpable evasions and violations of inviolable and 

 impossible international engagements were brought to an end 

 by the so-called 'Entente Cordiale'. There was a general 

 taking of accounts and stock-taking by England and France 

 all over the world, in Africa, Australasia, Egypt, and New- 

 foundland ; a balance-sheet was struck, and France renounced 

 her fishing and drying rights under the Treaty of Utrecht 

 and the succeeding Treaties, and retained or received in their 

 place a right to fish in the sea along the Treaty shore for cod, 

 bait-fish, and lobster on terms of equality with the local 

 inhabitants, and subject to local law. Priorities, privileges, 

 exclusions, exemptions, and extra-territorial jurisdictions were 

 swept away, the French warships went home, and nowadays 

 Frenchmen fish, if they wish, on what was once the Treaty 

 shore, side by side with the colonists just as though they were 

 Englishmen from England. 



The Anglo-French chapter — some four centuries long — The lobster 

 closed ; and the lobster, which darkened its closing para- disappeared 

 graphs, ceased to be a force in history. tics, 



The Anglo-American chapter is finished also, but until late and the 

 in 1 9 10 the herring bred strife. We left the trail of ^^^ Ij'j^fJ'' 

 herring somewhere in the Seventies in order to pursue the 



VOL. V. VT. IV Q 



