ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 



145 



which is now part of Massachusetts, one of the original colonies 

 that entered into the constitution of the Colony of Massachusetts. 

 The statutes of 1668, 1670, 1672, 1677 are statutes regulating 

 fishing, only by either excluding outsiders from fishing or letting 

 them in to fish. 



Then there is a statute, or two successive statutes in New York, 

 relating to fishing in the County of Suffolk. 



Now those are fish regulations. They are shore regulations of 

 the most obnoxious kind. They are designed to prevent any 

 market fishing at all; anybody coming from outside to interfere 

 with the natives in taking fish. 



Perhaps it is a little clearer to me than it would be to some 

 other readers, because I think I have fished over every bay, and 

 every cove, and creek, and inlet in Suffolk County. It is the 

 east end of Long Island, a place by itself, which, in those days, 

 before there was any railroad, was almost self-governing under the 

 sovereignty of the state of New York. And they got the Legisla- 

 ture of New York to pass a law which would keep their fishing for 

 themselves; the natives on the shore practically barred everybody 

 else out. No person to draw any seine or net of any length, or set 

 any seine or net more than 6 fathoms long, with meshes not less 

 than 3 inches square, from the 15th November to the isth April, 

 in the bays, rivers, or creeks of the County of Suffolk. 



Now, the observation I have to make about that is this: If 

 these negotiators had ever heard of these little local regulations 

 down at the east end of Long Island, far to the south, they would 

 have undertaken not to permit that kind of regulation, but to pre- 

 vent it. But there was no general system of fish regulation of any 

 kind. 



Then there are, over on p. 13 of the Memorandum, three statutes 

 cited: one of New Jersey in 1826, that is eight years after the treaty 

 of 1818, which limited fishing to the citizens of New Jersey; one 

 of Delaware in 187 1, fifty odd years after the treaty, and I do not 

 think we need trouble about that; and one of Maryland in 1896, 

 nearly eighty years after the treaty. 



Those are all of the American statutes. 



Now, as to the Statutes of Great Britain and her colonies: 

 In the first place there were proclamations in this Memorandum. 



