202 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



an award of 5,500,000 dollars that the United States was called 

 upon to pay for the privileges under the treaty of 1871, wrote very 

 promptly regarding the observation by Lord Salisbury about the 

 three distinct violations of law, and I now read this from p. 655 of 

 the United States Case Appendix, because it is the matter to which 

 Lord Salisbury makes answer in his subsequent letter. Mr. Evarts 

 says, beginning with the third paragraph on this p. 655 : 



"In this observation of Lord Salisbury, this Government cannot fail to 

 see a necessary implication that Her Majesty's Goverrmient conceives that 

 in the prosecution of the right of fishing accorded to the United States by 

 Article XVIII of the treaty our fishermen are subject to the local regulations 

 which govern the coast population of Newfoundland in their prosecution of their 

 fishing industry, whatever those regulations may be, and whether enacted 

 before or since the Treaty of Washington. 



"The three particulars in which our fishermen are supposed to be con- 

 strained by actual legislation of the province cover in principle every degree 

 of regulation of our fishing industry within the three-nule hne which can 

 well be conceived. But they are, in themselves, so important and so serious 

 a limitation of the rights secured by the treaty as practically to exclude our 

 fishermen from any profitable pursuit of the right, which, I need not add, is 

 equivalent to annulling or canceling by the Provincial Government of the 

 privilege accorded by the treaty with the British Government. 



"If our fishing-fleet is subject to the Sunday laws of Newfoundland, 

 made for the coast population; if it is excluded from the fishing grounds for 

 half the year, from October to April; if our 'seines and other contrivances' 

 for catching fish are subject to the regulations of the legislature of Newfound- 

 land, it is not easy to see what firm or valuable measure for the privilege of 

 Article XVIII, as conceded to the United States, this Government can promise 

 to its citizens under the guaranty of tha treaty. 



"It would not, under any circumstances, be admissible for one govern- 

 ment to subject the persons, the property, and the interests of its fishermen 

 to the unregulated regulation of another government upon the suggestion 

 that such authority will not be oppressively or capriciously exercised, nor 

 would any government accept as an adequate guaranty of the proper exercise 

 of such authority over its citizens by a foreign government, that, presump- 

 tively, regulations would be uniform in their operation upon the subject 

 of both governments in similar case. If there are to be regulations of a 

 common enjoyment, they must be authenticated by a common or joint 

 authority." 



That is a clear, definite, and unequivocal statement of Mr. 

 Evarts' view. In closing the letter, in the last paragraph on page 

 657, he says: 



