PERIOD I'ROM 1871 TO 1905. 665 



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 pursuit invaded no man's rights, 

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

 its lawful limits could have been promptly and quietly stopped by 

 the interference and representations of the lawfully constituted au- 

 thorities. They were acting under the provisions of the very statute 

 which they are alleged to have violated, for it seems to have escaped 

 the attention of Lord Salisbury that section 28 of the title of the 

 consolidated acts referred to contains the provision that " Nothing 

 in this chapter shall affect the rights and privileges granted by 

 treaty to the subjects of any state or power in amity with Her 

 Majesty." They were engaged, as I shall hereafter demonstrate, in 

 a lawful industry, guaranteed by the treaty of 1871, in a method 

 which was recognized as legitimate by the award of the Halifax 

 Commission, the privilege to exercise which their government had 

 agreed to pay for. They were forcibly stopped, not by legal au- 

 thority, but by mob violence. They made no resistance, withdrew 

 from the fishing grounds, and represented the outrage to their Gov- 

 ernment, thus acting in entire conformity with the principle as justly 

 stated by Lord Salisbury himself, that 



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

 have the right of binding Americans who fish within their waters by 

 any law r s which do not contravene existing treaties, it must be further 

 conceded that the duty of determining the existence of such contra- 

 vention must be undertaken by the governments, and can not be 

 remitted to the judgment of each individual fisherman." 



There is another passage of Lord Salisbury's dispatch to which I 

 should call your attention. Lord Salisbury says: 



" I hardly believe, however, that Mr. Evarts would in discussion 

 adhere to the broad doctrine, which some portion of his language 

 would appear to convey, that no British authority has a right to pass 

 any kind of laws binding Americans who are fishing in British 

 waters; for if that contention be just the same disability applies a 

 fortiori to any other powers, and the waters must be delivered over 

 to anarchy." 



I certainly can not recall any language of mine in this correspond- 

 ence which is capable of so extraordinary a construction. I have 

 nowhere taken any position larger or broader than that which Lord 

 Salisbury says : 



" Her Majesty's Government will readily admit, what is, indeed, 

 self-evident, that Britisli sovereignty, as regards these waters, is 

 limited in its scope by the engagements of the Treaty of Washing- 

 ton, which can not be affected or modified by any municipal legisla- 

 ture." 



I have never denied the full authority and jurisdiction, either of 

 the imperial or colonial governments, over their territorial waters, 

 except so far as by treaty that authority and jurisdiction have been 

 deliberately limited by these governments themselves. Under no 

 claim or authority suggested or advocated by me could any other 

 government demand exemption from the provisions of British or 

 colonial law, unless that exemption was secured by treaty; and if 



