204 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



In this letter Lord Salisbury, after saying that if there had 

 been inadvertent trespass upon the line, the Kmits, by any laws 

 which contravened treaties, the matter should be taken up by the 

 governments, proceeds to say that Mr. Evarts has not specified 

 any recent legislation which is supposed to pass the hmits of the 

 American right. Thereupon Mr. Evarts proceeds to specify, in 

 his letter in reply, of the ist August, 1879. He specifies [p. 671] 

 the prohibition against "taking herring by the seine or other such 

 contrivance between the 20th of October and the 12th of April," 

 and the prohibition against "taking herring between the 20th of 

 December and the ist of April with seines of less than" a certain 

 mesh, and the prohibition against taking herring between the loth 

 May and the 20th October — that is, the bank fishing season — 

 within a mile of any settlement on the south coast, and the Sunday 

 prohibition. And he advises Lord Sahsbury that the rights of the 

 United States, the treaty rights, are both "seriously modified and 

 injuriously affected," using Lord Sahsbury's words, by municipal 

 legislation "which closes such fishery absolutely for seven months 

 of the year, prescribes a special method of exercise, forbids exporta- 

 tion for five months, and, in certain locahties, absolutely limits 

 the three-mile area which it was the express purpose of the treaty to 

 open." 



Thereupon Lord Sahsbury makes another reply, in which he 

 supplements and leaves no possibiHty of doubt as to the meaning 

 and scope and effect of his previous declarations. That is in his 

 letter of the 3rd April, 1880, which begins on p. 683 of the United 

 States Case Appendix. He says in the second paragraph of the 

 letter, on p. 683 : 



"In considering whether compensation can properly be demanded and 

 paid in this case, regard must be had to the facts as estabUshed, and to the 

 intent and e£Eect of the articles of the Treaty of Washington and the con- 

 vention of 1818 which are applicable to those facts." 



And he proceeds to a careful consideration of those instruments 

 and their effect. 



I shall ask the Tribunal also to observe that in the first para- 

 graph he explains the delay in sending this letter by saying that it 

 has been occasioned by the necessity of instituting a very careful 



