THE NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERY QUESTION. 21 7 



MISSION OF THE DELEGATES FROM 



NEWFOUNDLAND IN 1890. 



Now we are tolerably aware of the position taken up by Great 

 Britain and France on this Newfoundland Fishery Question, but 

 what is the position taken by the people and Legislature of New- 

 foundland, and what are the reasons that have led them successively 

 and successfully to resist the various Anglo-French Conventions for 

 the settlement of the difficulty ? 



Last year a Special Delegation, sent, not from the responsible 

 Government, but from the people and Parliament of Newfoundland, 

 enabled us to obtain some valuable information, and to form an 

 impartial judgment on the whole question from a Newfoundland 

 point of view, the point of view that England should endeavour to 

 approach the controversy. 



The people of Newfoundland, through the delegates, declare they 

 are weary of waiting, and weary of the repeated failures of all diplomatic 

 efforts, and therefore they determined to bring before the people of 

 England, by this delegation, their grievances, or, to use their own 

 words, the cruel hardships which Britain's most ancient Colony has 

 suffered long, convinced that no Government will be able to grapple 

 with the difficulty by the only way that it should be grappled with, 

 unless the public conscience of England is roused to a sense of the 

 injuries inflicted on a loyal portion of the British Empire, and the 

 public judgment convinced that the claims made by Newfoundland 

 are wholly right and just. 



The first question that we asked the Newfoundland Delegation, and 

 the question that will naturally occur to every unbiassed mind, . 

 how is it that every attempt at negotiation, and every Anglo-French 

 Convention based upon them from 1844 to 1885, have signally failed 

 to secure a basis of settlement ? And how is it that each and all of 

 these Anglo-French Conventions have been rejected by the people, 

 the Parliament, and the Government of Newfoundland, when finally 

 submitted to them for their approval ? 



Their reply was this : These various Commissions, in the first 

 place, were purely Anglo-French Commissions, determined upon 

 and appointed, ab initio, without the knowledge or co-operation 

 of the responsible authorities in Newfoundland, and often in face 

 of their protestations; and that, with the exception of the last Com- 

 mission of 1884-5, they were practically unacquainted with the whole 



