THE NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERY QUESTION. 221 



' ' This Act embodied provisions of an arbitrary and oppressive character, wliolly 

 repugnant to those principles of liberty and justice which are held to be the basis of 

 modern British legislation. They conferred upon the officers of Her Majesty's ships 

 the duties of a protective service, and intrusted them with the settlement of Treaty 

 disputes, with powers of summary adjudication independent of all those restrictions 

 and safeguards which British law has devised for the defence of the inherent rights of 

 the British subjects. These powers extended to the most severe penal inflictions and 

 were beyond all appeal, and when it is remembered that they were exercised by 

 persons unacquainted with legal procedure, whose peculiar training and habits of 

 thought and action were dictated by an unquestioning submission to decrees, it must 

 be manifest that extreme hardship and injustice were the frequent inevitable results. 



" It may be alleged that while the Act in question was yet upon the Statute-booli it 

 had been allowed to lapse into comparative desuetude, so incompatible with modem 

 civilisation would have been the application of this barbarous law. Unhappily the 

 record of the years 1877, 1888, and 1889 gives instances of its enforcement, under 

 assumed authority, with disastrous consequences to the property and industry of some 

 of Her Majesty's subjects engaged in tlie fisheries of Newfoundland. We submit that 

 this law cannot possibly be rendered applicable to the circumstances which it is 

 designed to meet. All the social and general conditions of Newfoundland, particu- 

 larly those parts of the coasts affected by international Treaties, have undergone a 

 radical and complete change in the many years that have elapsed since the law was 

 under consideration. There was then no resident population in those localities, which 

 have been long since settled in considerable numbers ; while trade from various 

 sources of employment has become developed, and yields its contributions to the 

 Customs revenue. 



"Several years ago Her Majesty's Government confirmed the occupation of the 

 coast by acceding to the desire of the residents for representation in the House of 

 Assembly, and for the appointment of magistrates and poUce. They are periodically 

 visited by the Supreme Court of Circuit ; they have regular communication with the 

 rest of the country and vrith Canada by mail and passenger steamers. In a word, 

 they have all the ordinary institutions of civil life. The permanence of their position 

 being thus conclusively assiured and recognised, it can hardly be necessary to point 

 out vrith what cruel severity and with what destructive effect the proposed law will 

 operate upon the trade and industries, and upon every other appreciable interest of 

 this section 



' ' The loyal inhabitants of this whole dependency of the British Crown would, 

 therefore, most earnestly implore your honourable House, by all its honoured and 

 revered traditions, to desist from inflicting upon the, people of this country the 

 calamity of such an enactment as that now under contemplation. 



' ' We would remind your honourable House that her Majesty's Government and 

 France lately agreed upon Arbitration respecting the Newfoundland fisheries, such 

 tribunal proposing to deal with one question only — the recent question of the lobster 

 fishery. This partial proceeding has been decided upon, not only without reference 

 to the Newfoundland Government, but against their emphatic protest. We, on the 

 part of the colony, beg to present an equally emphatic protest against the course 

 adopted iti direct violation of the principles of that constitutional form of government 

 which it is our privilege to possess. 



"We would, in conclusion, respectfully invoke the aid of your honourable House for 

 protection of the Treaty rights of Newfoundland against the demand of the French for 

 exclusive fishery, including lobster fishing, on those portions of the coast where they 

 hold acknowledged privileges. The rights of British subjects have on several occa- 

 sions been declared, and the pretensions of the French disallowed by some of the 



