ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 201 



profits, the benefits which would be derived by the United States 

 from the exercise of the treaty privileges conferred, were based upon 

 the fuU exercise of the treaty rights, without any Hmitation as to 

 time or manner, and upon a consideration of the use in that exercise 

 of the very methods of taking fish which are denounced by the laws 

 of Newfoundland. So that the award, based upon those computa- 

 tions, must necessarily have been based upon an error of law if it 

 had turned out that Great Britain was contending that the Ameri- 

 can fishermen, under the treaty of 187 1, could not use methods or 

 exercise that- full scope of their industry which would appear to be 

 possible under the terms of the treaty, and which was counted upon 

 and made the basis of the computation. As Mr. Evarts pointed 

 out, the very law of Newfoundland which prohibits the winter 

 fishery, that is, this Act of 1862 prohibiting seining from the 20th 

 October to April, would, if apphed, exclude our people from the 

 winter fishery, which was one of the principal things that entered 

 into the computation of the counsel for Great Britain before the 

 Halifax Commission. They were put in the position, by Lord 

 Salisbury's first view, that they had got an award based upon the 

 right to carry on a profitable industry in Newfoundland, and then, 

 before the award was made, came the proposition that, by the law 

 of Newfoundland, American fishermen were prevented from doing 

 that very thing. 



I must now trouble your Honors by returning again to the 

 Fortune Bay correspondence, because my former reference to it 

 was only for a specific purpose, and it has an important bearing upon 

 the matter that I am now presenting. 



The Tribimal will remember that American fishermen in 1878, 

 some twenty odd vessels, went into Fortune Bay for the purpose 

 of catching fish. They went ashore and were drawing their seines, 

 and the inhabitants came and interfered with them, and there was 

 a good deal of disturbance, and finally some of the nets were cut 

 and the fish already taken were let out, and there was a claim for 

 damages by the United States. To that claim for damages Lord 

 SaKsbury replied with a refusal, saying that they were violating 

 three distinct laws of the colony. Thereupon Mr. Evarts, who was 

 smarting a little under what we regarded in the United States as 

 being a very excessive award on the part of the HaHfax Commission, 



