230 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



were taken too quickly, herring would go, and all the colony 

 would follow all the cod, and all the cod would follow all the 

 herring, into ' chaos and eternal night '. No herring no cod, 

 no cod no colony. These arguments seemed unanswerable 

 from the point of view of expediency. The Colonial Legis- 

 lature were in grim earnest, bought two revenue steamers, and 

 instituted a fishery board, with Adolf Nielsen^ a Norse expert, 

 as president, thus restoring the descendants of Karlsevne to 

 the scene of his discoveries. Remissness in enforcing fishery 

 laws became a thing of the past. 

 The Brit- The United States were also in earnest, and identified 

 Jf^^^''^^^^^ themselves with the French contention, that Treaty rights 

 opposed io could not be impaired by provincial laws. Although the 

 bliiied '^ French cause so nearly resembled the American cause, the 

 States on two Powers never made common cause, and England was 

 tfofTof' ^^^^ faced by a coalition, as she had been in the early days of 

 sovereign- the nineteenth century. French statesmen had claimed 

 ^' French fishing-rights as a relic of French sovereignty, recog- 



nized but not created by Treaty, and a similar metaphysical 

 view of the Treaty of 1818 was now broached. It was con- 

 tended that in 1783 'the fisheries were not conceded, but 

 recognized as a right inherent in the Americans, which, though 

 they had ceased to be British subjects, they continued to 

 enjoy ',^ and that this right, like American Independence, was 

 suspended without being destroyed by the American war of 

 1 81 2. The view expressed by an oflftcial American circular in 

 1856, that 'observation' of Colonial Acts and Executive Regu- 

 lations ' is enforced upon the citizens of the United States in 

 the like manner as they are observed by British subjects ', 

 was now repudiated by the United States. English statesmen 

 unanimously opposed the new line of argument, which 

 American diplomats now adopted, although in discussing the 

 Treaty of Washington Lord Salisbury and Lord Granville 

 admitted that local regulations must be reasonable and bona 

 ^ Citing Lord Loughborough. 



