CORRESPONDENCE 453 



INSTRUCTION FROM MR. ROOT TO MR. REID, JUNE 30, 19061 



Department of State, Washington, June 30, 1906 



Sir, — The memorandum inclosed in the note from Sir Edward Grey to you of 

 the 2nd February, 1906, and transmitted by you on the 6th February, has received 

 careful consideration. 



The letter which I had the honor to address to the British Ambassador in Wash- 

 ington on the 19th October last stated with greater detail the complaint in my letter 

 to him of the 12th October, 1905, to the effect that the local oflScers of Newfoundland 

 had attempted to treat American ships as such, without reference to the rights of their 

 American owners and officers, refusing to allow such ships sailing under register to 

 take part in the fishing on the Treaty coast, although owned and commanded by 

 Americans, and limiting the exercise of the right to fish to ships having a fishing licence. 



In my communications the Government of the United States objected to this 

 treatment of ships as such — that is, as trading-vessels or fishing-vessels, and laid 

 down a series of propositions regarding the treatment due to American vessels on the 

 Treaty coast, based on the view that such treatment should depend, not upon the 

 character of the ship as a registered or licensed vessel, but upon its being American; 

 that is, owned and ofiBcered by Americans, and, therefore, entitled to exercise the rights 

 assured by the Treaty of 1818 to the inhabitants of the United States. 



It is a cause of gratification to the Government of the United States that the 

 prohibitions interposed by the local officials of Newfoundland were promptly with- 

 drawn upon the communications of the fact to His Majesty's Government, and that 

 the Memorandum now under consideration emphatically condemns the view upon 

 which the action of the local officers was based, even to the extent of refusing assent 

 to the ordinary forms of expression which ascribe to ships the rights and liabilities of 

 owners and masters in respect of them. 



It is true that the Memorandum itself uses the same form of expression when 

 asserting that American ships have committed breaches of the Colonial Customs 

 Law, and ascribing to them duties, obligations, omissions, and purposes which the 

 Memorandum describes. Yet we may agree that ships, strictly speaking, can have 

 no rights or duties, and that whenever the Memorandum, or the letter upon which it 

 comments, speaks of a ship's rights and duties, it but uses a convenient and customary 

 form of describing the owner's or master's right and duties in respect of the ship. 

 As this is conceded to be essentially "a ship fishing," and as neither in 1818 nor since 

 could there be an American ship not owned and officered by Americans, it is probably 

 quite unimportant which form of expression is used. 



I find in the Memorandum no substantial dissent from the first proposition of my 

 note to Sir Mortimer Durand of the 19th October, IQ05, that any American vessel 

 is entitled to go into waters of the Treaty coast and take fish of any kind, and that 

 she derives this right from the Treaty and not from any authority proceeding from the 

 Government of Newfoundland. 



Nor do I find any substantial dissent from the fourth, fifth, and sixth propositions, 

 which relate to the method of establishing the nationality of the vessel entering the 

 Treaty waters for the purpose of fishing, unless it be intended, by the comments on 

 those propositions, to assert that the British Government is entitled to claim that, 

 when an American goes with his vessel upon the Treaty coast for the purpose of fishing, 

 or with his vessel enters the bays or harbours of the coast for the purpose of shelter and 

 '■ Appendix, U. S. Case, p. 978; Appendix, British Case, p. 498. 



