PERIOD FROM 1871 TO 1905. 655 



It is no part of my present purpose to point out that this alleged 

 infraction of the reserved rights of the local fishermen does not justify 

 the methods of correction or redress used to drive off our fishermen 

 and break up their prosecution of the fishing. This may be reserved 

 also for discussion when both governments have a fuller knowledge 

 of the actual circumstances of the transaction. 



In transmitting to you a copy of Captain Sulivan's report, Lord 

 Salisbury says: "You will perceive that the report in question ap- 

 pears to demonstrate conclusively that the United States fishermen on 

 this occasion had committed three distinct breaches of the law." 



In this observation of Lord Salisbury, this government cannot fail 

 to see a necessary implication that Her Majesty's Government con- 

 ceives that in the prosecution of the right of fishing accorded to the 

 United States by Article XVIII of the treaty our fishermen are sub- 

 ject to the local regulations which govern the coast population of 

 Newfoundland in their prosecution of their fishing industry, what- 

 ever those regulations may be, and whether enacted before or since 

 the Treaty of Washington. 



The three particulars in which our fishermen are supposed to be 

 constrained by actual legislation of the province cover in principle 

 every degree of regulation of our fishing industry within the three- 

 mile line which can well be conceived. But they are, in themselves, 

 so important and so serious a limitation of the rights secured by the 

 treaty as practically to exclude our fishermen from any profitable 

 pursuit of the right, which, I need not add, is equivalent to annulling 

 or cancelling by the Provincial Government of the privilege accorded 

 by the treaty with the British Government. 



If our fishing-fleet is subject to the Sunday laws of Newfound- 

 land, made for the coast population ; if it is excluded from the fishing 

 grounds for half the year, from October to April ; if our " seines and 

 other contrivances " for catching fish are subject to the regulations 

 of the legislature of Newfoundland, it is not easy to see what firm or 

 valuable measure for the privilege of Article XVIII, as conceded to 

 the United States, this government can promise to its citizens under 

 the guaranty of the treaty. 



It would not, under any circumstances, be admissible for one gov- 

 ernment to subject the persons, the property, and the interests of its 

 fishermen to the unregulated regulation of another government upon 

 the suggestion that such authority will not be oppressively or ca- 

 priciously exercised, nor would any government accept as an ade- 

 quate guaranty of the proper exercise of such authority over its 

 citizens by a foreign government, that, presumptively, regulations 

 would be uniform in their operation upon the subjects of both gov- 

 ernments in similar case. If there are to be regulations of a common 

 enjoyment, they must be authenticated by a common or joint au- 

 thority. 



But most manifestly the subject of the regulation of the enjoyment 

 of the shore fishery by the resident provincial population, and of the 

 inshore fishery by our fleet of fishing-cruisers, does not tolerate the 

 control of so divergent and competing interests by the domestic 

 legislation of the provinces. Protecting and nursing the domestic 

 interest at the expense of the foreign interest, on the ordinary mo- 

 tives of human conduct, necessarily shape and animate the local 



