CORRESPONDENCE 423 



instructed that it was impossible for this Government duly to appreciate the value of 

 Captain Sulivan's report, until it was permitted to see the testimony upon which 

 the conclusions of that report professed to rest. And you were further directed to 

 say that, putting aside for after examination the variations of fact, it seemed to this 

 government that the assumption of the report was, that the United States fisher- 

 men were fishing illegally, because their fishing was being conducted at a time and 

 by methods forbidden by certain colonial statutes; that the language of Lord Salis- 

 bury, in communicating the report with his approval, indicated the intention of Her 

 Britannic Majesty's Government to maintain the position, that the treaty privileges 

 secured to United States fishermen by the treaty of 187 1 were held subject to such 

 limitations as might be imposed upon their exercise by colonial legislation; and "that 

 so grave a question, in its bearing upon the obligations of this Government under 

 the treaty, makes it necessary, that the President should ask from Her Majesty's 

 Government a frank avowal or disavowal, of the paramount authority of provincial 

 legislation to regulate the enjoyment by our people of the inshore fishery, which seems 

 to be intimated, if not asserted, in Lord Salisbury's note." 



In reply to this communication, Lord SaUsbury, 7th November, 1878, trans- 

 mitted to you the depositions which accompanied Captain Sulivan's report, and said: 



"In pointing out that the American fishermen had broken the law within the 

 territorial limits of Her Majesty's domains, I had no intention of inferentially laying 

 down any principles of international law, and no advantage would, I think, be gained 

 by doing so to a greater extent than the facts in question absolutely require. . . . 

 Her Majesty's Government will readily admit — what is, indeed, self evident — ■ that 

 British sovereignty, as regards those waters, is limited in its scope by the engage- 

 ments of the Treaty of Washington, which cannot be modified or affected by any 

 municipal legislation." It is with the greatest pleasure that the United States 

 Goverimient receives this language as "the frank disavowal" which it asked, "of 

 the paramount authority of provincial legislation to regulate the enjoyment by our 

 people of the inshore fishery." Removing, as this explicit language does, the only 

 serious difficulty which threatened to embarrass this discussion, I am now at Uberty 

 to resume the consideration of these differences in the same spirit and with the same 

 hopes so fully and properly expressed in the concluding paragraph of Lord Salis- 

 bury's dispatch. He says: 



"It is not explicitly stated in Mr. Evarts' dispatch that he considers any recent 

 acts of the colonial legislature to be inconsistent with the rights acquired by the 

 United States under the Treaty of Washington. But, if that is the case. Her Majesty's 

 Government will, in a friendly spirit, consider any representations he may think it 

 right to make upon the subject, with the hope of coming to a satisfactory under- 

 standing." 



It is the purpose, therefore, of the present dispatch to convey to you, in order 

 that they may be submitted to Her Britannic Majesty's Government, the conclu- 

 sions which have been reached by the Government of the United States as to the rights 

 secured to its citizens, under the Treaty of 1871, in the herring fishery upon the New- 

 foundland coast, and the extent to which those rights have been infringed by the 

 transactions in Fortune Bay on January 6, 1878. 



Before doing so, however, I deem it proper, in order to clear the argument of all 

 unnecessary issues, to correct what I consider certain misapprehensions of the views 

 of this Government contained in Lord Salisbury's dispatch of 7th November, 1878. 

 The Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Her Britannic Majesty says: 



