43° APPENDIX 



proceed from "the liberty to take fish of every kind" secured by the treaty. This 

 Government cannot anticipate that the British Government will now contend that 

 the time and the method for which it asked and received compensation are forbidden 

 by the terms of the very treaty under which it made the claim and received the pay- 

 ment. Indeed, the language of Lord Salisbury justifies the Government of the United 

 States in drawing the conclusion that between itself and Her Britannic Majesty's 

 Government there is no substantial difference in the construction of the privilege of 

 the treaty of 1871, and that in the future the colonial regulation of the fisheries 

 with which, as far as their own interests are concerned, we have neither right nor 

 desire to intermeddle, will not be allowed to modify or affect the rights which have 

 been guaranteed to citizens of the United States. 



You will therefore say to Lord Salisbury, that the Government of the United 

 States considers that the engagements of the treaty of 1871 contravened by the local 

 legislation of Newfoundland, by the prohibition of the use of seines, by the closing 

 of the fishery with seines between October and April, by the forbidding of fishing for 

 the purpose of exportation between December and April, by the prohibition to fish 

 on Sunday, by the allowance of nets of only a specified mesh, and by the limitation of 

 the area of fishing between Cape Ray and Cape Chapeau Rouge. Of course, this is 

 only upon the supposition that such laws are considered as applying to United States 

 fishermen: as local regulations for native fishermen, we have no concern with them. 

 The contravention consists in excluding United States fishermen during the very times 

 in which they have been used to pursue this industry, and forbidding the methods 

 by which alone it can profitably be carried on. The exclusion of the time from October 

 to April covers the only season in which frozen herring can be procured, while the 

 prohibition of the seines would interfere with the vessels, who, occupied in cod-fishing 

 during the summer, go to Fortune Bay in the winter, and would consequently have 

 to make a complete change in their fishing gear, or depend entirely upon purchase 

 from the natives for their supply. The prohibition of work on Sunday is impossible 

 under the conditions of the fishery. The vessels must be at Fortune Bay at a certain 

 time, and leave for market at a certain time. The entrance of the shoals of herring 

 is uncertain, and the time they stay equally so. Whenever they come they must be 

 caught, and the evidence in this very case, shows that after Sunday, the 6th of January, 

 there was no other influx of these fish, and that prohibition on that day would have 

 been equivalent to shutting out the fishermen for the season. 



If I am correct in the views hitherto expressed, it follows that the United States 

 Government must consider the United States fishermen as engaged in a lawful industry, 

 from which they were driven by lawless violence, at great loss and damage to them; 

 and that as this was in violation of rights guaranteed by the Treaty of Washington 

 between Great Britain and the United States, they have reasonable ground to expect, 

 at the hands of Her Britannic Majesty's Government, proper compensation for the 

 loss they have sustained. The United States Government, of course, desires to avoid 

 an exaggerated estimate of the loss, which has actually sustained, but thinks you will 

 find the elements for a fair calculation in the sworn statement of the owners, copies 

 of which are herewith sent. 



You will find in the printed pamphlet which accompanies this, and which is the 

 statement submitted to this Department on behalf of twenty of the vessels, the expense 

 of each vessel in preparation for the fishery and her estimated loss and damage. The 

 same statement with regard to the two vessels New England and Ontario not in- 

 cluded in this list of twenty, you will find attached hereto, thus making a com- 



