68 THE ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



are many matters of national policy which a state may desire to ad- 

 vance or promote, and the United States does not admit that there 

 is any principle of public law which gives Great Britain authority. 

 at the expense of American fishing rights, to conserve and advance 

 the British policy of Sabbath observance any more than any other 

 policy which may commend itself to that Government. If the law is 

 directed at the time and manner of taking fish, and does in fact limit 

 and restrain the treaty right of American fishermen to take fish, it 

 contravenes the treaty right, and the propriety of the policy, which 

 it is supposed to subserve, is wholly immaterial. 



Great Britain may some time consider it desirable that British 

 national holidays be observed on the sea by cessation from labor 

 and that the holy days of the Established Church of England be re- 

 spected. Humane instincts may be aroused to the point of inducing 

 the British Government to make laws against methods of fishing 

 which inflict pain, and necessity may induce Great Britain at some 

 time, as sovereign of the territory over which the fisheries are being 

 carried on, to impose a license tax on the liberty to fish, or an excise 

 tax on each individual's catch of fish. If Great Britain may say that 

 those entitled by treaty to an unlimited right to fish in British waters 

 must refrain from fishing one day out of every seven, in aid of the 

 British religious policy, that Government may go so far as to claim 

 an equal right to proscribe other days, and to impose any other limita- 

 tions on the fishing right which commend themselves in aid of these 

 or of any other policies connected or unconnected with the regulation 

 of the fisheries. 



Apart from the question of the power to impose British Sunday 

 laws on American fishermen, which alone has been discussed up to 

 this point, there still remains to be considered the reasonableness of 

 such laws, either within themselves, or within the standard set up by 

 Great Britain ; viz., " desirable on grounds of public morals." 



It may be said of such laws that they are not reasonable in any 

 sense when directed against foreigners having treaty rights to fish in 

 the territorial waters, because they do not operate as a regulation of 

 fishing, but a prohibition against fishing. 



Furthermore, Sunday laws are not reasonable in any sense when 

 applied to foreigners whose vessels must come, as in this case, a 

 distance of three hundred leagues, for the purpose of enjoying their 

 treaty rights. Where fishing vessels can make at most two and 



