PERIOD FROM 1871 TO 1888. 165 



with the same hopes so fully and properly expressed in the concluding 

 paragraph of Lord Sahsbury's dispatch. He says : 



*'It is not explicitly stated in Mr. Evarts' dispatch that he con- 

 siders any recent acts of the colonial legislature to be inconsistent 

 with the rights acquired by the United States under the Treaty of 

 Washington. But if that is the case, Her ^lajesty's Government 

 will, in a friendly spirit, consider any representations he may think 

 it right to make upon the subject, with the hope of coming to a satis- 

 factor}'' understanding." 



It is the puq^ose, therefore, of the present dispatch to convey to 

 you, in order that they may be submitted to Her Brittanic Majesty's 

 Government, the conclusions which have been reached by the Govern- 

 ment of the United States as to the rights secured to its citizens under 

 the treaty of 1871 in the herring fishery upon the Newfoundland 

 coast, and the extent to which those rights have been infringed by 

 the transactions in Fortune Bay on January 6, 1878. 



Before doing so, however, I deem it proper, in order to clear the 

 argument of all unnecessary issues, to correct what I consider certain 

 misapprehensions of the views of this Government contained in 

 Lord Salisbury's dispatch of 7th of November, 1878. The secretary 

 for foreign affairs of Her Brittanic i\fajesty says: 



''If, however, it be admitted that the Newfoundland legislature 

 have the right of binding Americans who fish within their waters 

 by any laws which do not contravene existing treaties, it must be 

 further conceded that the duty of determining the existence of such 

 contravention must be undertaken by the governments, and can not 

 be remitted to the discretion of each individual fisherman. For 

 such discretion, if exercised on one side, can hardly be refused on 

 the other. If any American fisherman may violently break a law 

 which he believes to be contrary to a treaty, a Newfoundland fish- 

 erman may violently maintain it if he beheves it to be in accordance 

 with treaty." 



His lordship can scarcely have intended this last proposition to be 

 taken in its literal significance. An infraction of law may be ac- 

 companied by violence which affects the person or property of an 

 individual, and that individual may be warranted in resisting such 

 illegal violence, so far as it directly affects him, without reference 

 to the relation of the act of violence to the law which it infringes, 

 but simply as a forcible invasion of his rights of person or property. 

 But that the infraction of a general municipal law, with or without 

 violence, can be corrected and punished by a mob, without official 

 character or direction, and who assume both to interpret and ad- 

 minister the law in controversy, is a proposition which does not 

 require the reply of elaborate argument between two governments 

 whose daily fife depends upon the steady application of the sound 

 and safe principles of English jurisprudence. However this may be, 

 the Government of the United States can not for a moment admit 

 that the conduct of the United States fishermen in Fortune Bay was 

 in any — the remotest — degree a violent breach of the law. 



Granting any and all the force which may be claimed for the 

 colonial legislation, the action of the United States fishermen was 

 the peaceable prosecution of an innocent industry, to which they 

 thought they were entitled. Its piu-suit invaded no man's rights, 

 committed violence upon no man's person, and if trespassing beyond 



