68 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



enterprise that dictated these laws. Granted, if you please, that 

 they had a perfect legal right to make those provisions, they ex- 

 hibited the spirit which I am discussing, and it was exhibited in 

 their regulation of our fishery as well as in the particular statute to 

 which I refer. 



We are not without much evidence as to this spirit and purpose. 

 It was intense, it was controlling, it made the government of New- 

 foundland willing to ignore the interests and wishes of their own 

 fishermen. It was not a fisherman's policy, but it was a trading 

 policy which was outcropping for the benefit of the great fishing 

 and trading firms of St. John's, and it was the same poUcy which 

 led Great Britain into the statutes which you have read, that 

 endeavored to keep Newfoundland unpopulated and inflicted 

 penalties upon people endeavoring to five in Newfoundland and 

 fish — a roast when they wanted raw and a raw when they wanted 

 roast poUcy. Here is the way in which the fishermen looked at it. 

 United States Counter-Case Appendix, p. 380. The fishermen of 

 the Ferryland district — observe, not on the treaty coast — send 

 a petition to the Legislature in which they say: 



"That your petitioners are engaged in the cod-fishery on the southern 

 shore, and until two years ago added to their earnings from that avocation 

 by the sale of bait to American vessels. 



"That this bait business was one which enabled your petitioners to earn 

 considerable money, and that the visits of these American vessels resulted 

 in the circulation of considerably larger amounts to the sale of ice, stores, 

 fishing outfits, shipping men, and proving a means of circulating at least 

 $40,000 per year to the people of this district." 



They strenuously object to this new policy of the government 

 of Newfoundland in so far as that branch of it goes which is con- 

 cerned with preventing the sale of bait. They say: 



" That this traffic has become so profitable to the people of these Nova 

 Scotia ports that they are advocating the abolishing of the Ucense fees alto- 

 gether, and allowing free entry to the American fishermen, without any restric- 

 tions, for the sake of the trade they bring. . . . 



"And that your petitioners, therefore, humbly pray that this Legislature 

 in its wisdom will terminate the present policy of hostility towards the Ameri- 

 can fishermen, and return to that under which the people of this district and 

 other districts of the Colony were able to earn food for their families by carry- 

 ing on legitimate traffic with the Americans, instead of being, as they are now, 



