ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 9 



department of a Foreign Office, that this claim could not be allowed 

 because the American fishermen who suffered the injury were guilty 

 of three distinct violations of the laws of Newfoundland; that they 

 were on shore when they had no right to be on shore; that 

 they were in-barring herring when the law prohibited it; and that 

 they were taking herring with a seine during the period between 

 October and May, when the statute prohibited it. In response 

 to that, Mr. Evarts called attention to the fact that these laws 

 were, in his view, not binding upon American fishermen, and he 

 said, in a letter of the 28th September, 1878, which appears in 

 the United States Case Appendix at p. 652, from which I read 

 on p. 655: 



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

 says: 'You will perceive that the report in question appears 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 caimot fail to 

 see a necessary impUcation that Her Majesty's Government conceives that in 

 the prosecution of the right of fishing accorded to the United States by Article 

 XVIII of the treaty our fishermen are subject to the local regulations which 

 govern the coeist population of Newfoundland in their prosecution of their 

 fishing industry, whatever those regulations may be, and whether enacted 

 before or since the Treaty of Washington." 



And he said, in the third paragraph below the one which I 

 have read: 



" It would not, under any circumstances, be admissible for one government 

 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 wiU not be oppressively or capriciously exercised, nor would any 

 government accept as an adequate guaranty of the proper exercise of such 

 authority over its citizens by a foreign government, that, presumptively, 

 jegulations would be imiform in their operation upon the subjects of both 

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

 enjoyment, they must be authenticated by a common or joint authority." 



And he concluded his letter by some paragraphs which I will 

 read from p. 657: 



"So grave a question, in its bearing upon the obligations of this Govern- 

 ment under the treaty makes it necessary that the President should ask from . 

 Her Majesty's Government a franl avowal or disavowal of the paramount 



