424 APPENDIX 



"If, however, it be admitted that the Newfoundland Legislature have the right 

 of binding Americans who fish within their waters by any laws which do not contra- 

 vene existing treaties, it must be further conceded that the duty of determining 

 the existence of such contravention must be undertaken by the Governments, and 

 cannot be remitted to the discretion of each individual fisherman. For such discretion, 

 if exercised on one side, can hardly be refused on the other. If any American fisher- 

 man may violently break a law which he believes to be contrary to treaty, a Newfound- 

 land fisherman may violently maintain it if he beUeves it to be in accordance with 

 treaty." 



His Lordship can scarcely have intended this last proposition to be taken in its 

 literal significance. An infraction of law may be accompanied by violence which 

 aSects the person or property of an individual, and that individual may be warranted 

 in resisting such illegal, violence, so far as it directly affects him, without reference 

 to the relation of the act of violence to the law which it infringes, but simply as a 

 forcible invasion of his rights of person or property. But that the infraction of a 

 general municipal law, with or without violence, can be corrected and punished by 

 a mob, without ofiicial character or direction, and who assume both to interpret and 

 administer the law in controversy, is a proposition which does not require the reply 

 of elaborate argument between two Governments whose daily life depends upon the 

 steady appUcation of the sound and safe principles of English jurisprudence. How- 

 ever this may be, the Government of the United States cannot for a moment admit 

 that the conduct of the United States fishermen in Fortune Bay was in any — the 

 remotest — degree a violent breach of law. Granting any and all the force which 

 may be claimed for the colonial legislature, the action of the United States fishermen 

 was the peaceable prosecution of an innocent industry, to which they thought they 

 were entitled. Its pursuit invaded no man's rights, committed violence upon no man's 

 person, and if trespassing beyond its lawful limits could have been promptly and 

 quietly stopped by the interference and representation of the lawfully constituted 

 authorities. They were acting under the provisions of the very statute which they 

 are alleged to have violated, for it seems to have escaped the attention of Lord Salis- 

 bury that section 28 of the title of the consolidated acts referred to contains the 

 provision that "Nothing in this chapter shall affect the rights and privileges granted 

 by treaty to the subjects of any state or power in amity with Her Majesty." They 

 were engaged, as I shall hereafter demonstrate, in a lawful industry, guaranteed by the 

 Treaty of 1871, in a method which was recognized as legitimate by the award of the 

 Halifax Commission, the privilege to exercise which their Government had agreed 

 to pay for. They were forcibly stopped, not by legal authority, but by mob violence. 

 They made no resistance, withdrew from the fishing grounds, and represented the 

 outrage to their Government, thus acting in entire conformity with the principle so 

 justly stated by Lord Sahsbury himself that — 



"if it be admitted, however, that the Newfoundland legislature have the right of 

 binding Americans who fish within their waters by any laws which do not contravene 

 existing treaties, it must be further conceded that the duty of determining the ex- 

 istence of such contravention must be undertaken by the Governments, and can- 

 not be remitted to the judgment of each individual fisherman." 



There is another passage of Lord Salisbury's dispatch to which I should call 

 your attention. Lord Sahsbury says: 



"I hardly believe, however, that Mr. Evarts would in discussion adhere to the 

 broad doctrine, which some portion of his language would appear to convey, that 



