ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 71 



purpose it is willing to ride down and over the interests of the 

 fisherfolk for whom our sympathies are invoked here. 



Not only that, but they are willing to flout the power of England. 

 In a score of commiuiications which have been read to you here 

 and in which Sir William MacGregor addressed the Colonial Office 

 he advisedly used the expression: "My responsible advisers' think 

 so and so, that wise and capable man excluding himself from par- 

 ticipation. In the score of communications that appear in this 

 record the colony of Newfoundland treats the government of 

 Great Britain with scant courtesy, with persistent condemnation, 

 and in a contumacious spirit. They are willing to violate the tra- 

 ditional policy of the British Empire, so designated here, which 

 never permitted the withdrawal from France of the ordinary trad- 

 ing privileges as to the piurchase of bait. They are willing to do 

 that for this sole purpose, that involves necessarily the prevention 

 of our fishing rights under the treaty of 1818 as well as the preven- 

 tion of our purchase under the ordinary comity of nations. 



And Sir James Winter does not hesitate to say, after his review 

 of the whole situation, that the American treaty right is worthless. 

 After discussing this Question No. 6 the President says that it was 

 worthless as regards herring, and Sir James Winter says: Yes, it is 

 to a certain extent worthless as regards herring, and practically 

 also worthless as regards cod-fish on that part of the coast. 



Sir Robert Bond of course boldly avows the same position in 

 1905 in the extract relating to Newfoundland being the mistress 

 of the northern seas. She is mistress, his proposition is; and if the 

 British theory of this grant is right, so she is. If we are prevented 

 from buying and we are prevented from taking, we hold this great 

 mdustry upon the banks at their will and in their power, and I 

 suppose we must abandon it or we must pay over again for the 

 opportunity of getting bait to prosecute the industry. 



I am not going to discuss protective tariffs. We have a tariff 

 policy under' our system of government. The national govern- 

 ment is practically ^.ssigned to indirect revenues, the field of direct 

 revenues is practically occupied by the separate states for local 

 purposes, and in the raising of (revenues by indirect means we have 

 built up a tariff and we have applied to it a principle which largely 

 obtains now throughout the world, that we shall raise our revenue 



