152 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



on the coast of Newfoundland, or does it not rather only refer to 

 fishing on the banks ? If one reads the preamble to the statute of 

 1775, p. 543 of the British Case Appendix, it seems to refer only to 

 the fishery on the banks. It is, perhaps, not clear, but they speak 

 only about fishing on the banks: 



"Now, in order to promote these great and important purposes, and 

 with a view, in the first place, to induce His Majesty's subjects to proceed 

 early from the ports of Great Britain to the banks of Newfoundland, and 

 thereby to prosecute the fishery on tha said banks to the greatest advantage, 

 may it please your Majesty that it may be enacted." 



Then again: 



"for eleven years, for a certain number of ships or vessels employed in the 

 British fishery on the banks of Newfoundland." 



They speak only of the fishery on the banks. Then, a little 

 below the middle of the page, after having referred to the Act of 

 King William III, they say: 



"and shall be fitted and cleared out from some port in Great Britain after 

 the first Day of January, one thousand seven himdred and seventy-six, and 

 after that day in each succeeding year, and shall proceed to the banks of New- 

 foundland; and having catched a cargo of fish upon those banks." 



Then again, some lines below: 



"Before the said fifteenth Day of July in each year, at the said island, 

 with a like cargo, and shall proceed again to the said banks." 



In the next line you again find the word "banks," and two lines 

 below again the word "banks." In the whole of that statute they 

 speak only of the fishery on the banks. 



Senator Root: It was the same fishery. It was then, as it is 

 now, all the same fishery. The fishery on the banks was the great 

 object of the use of Newfoundland, and this statute of 1775, like 

 all the previous statutes, in fact, treats them as a whole because the 

 successful prosecution of the bank fishery required the use of the 

 proximate shores, and I cannot doubt that the general provisions 

 of the statute did operate to cover all persons such as were the 

 British themselves and as were the Americans themselves, and as 

 were all the British and Americans in 1783 and from 1783 to 1818 

 — all those engaged in that fishery, the object of which was to take 



