CORRESPONDENCE 457 



authorizes a law limiting the exercise of the Treaty right, but whether the terms of 

 the grant authorize it. 



The distinguished writer just quoted observes in the same letter: — ■ 



"The Government of France each year during the fishing season employs ships 

 of war to superintend the fishery exercised by their countrymen, and, in consequence 

 of the divergent views entertained by the two Governments respectively as to the 

 interpretation to be placed upon the Treaties, questions of jurisdiction which might 

 at any moment have become serious have repeatedly arisen." 



The practice thus described, and which continued certainly until as late as the 

 modification of the French fishing rights in the year 1904, might well have been fol- 

 lowed by the United States, and probably would have been, were it not that the desire 

 to avoid such questions of jurisdiction as were frequently arising between the French 

 and the English has made this Government unwilling to have recourse to such a prac- 

 tice so long as the rights of its fishermen can be protected in any other way. 



The Government of the United States regrets to find that His Majesty's Govern- 

 ment has now taken a much more extreme position than that taken in the last active 

 correspondence upon the same question arising under the provisions of the Treaty 

 of Washington. In his letter of the 3rd April, 1880, to the American Minister in 

 London, Lord Salisbury said: — 



"In my note to Mr. Welsh of the 7th November, 1878, I stated that 'British 

 sovereignty as regards these waters, is limited in scope by the engagements of the 

 Treaty of Washington, which cannot be modified or affected by any municipal legisla- 

 tion,' and Her Majesty's Government fully admit that United States' fishermen 

 have the right of participation on the Newfoundland inshore fisheries, in common 

 with British subjects, as specified in Article XVIII of that Treaty. But it cannot 

 be claimed, consistently with this right of participation in common with the British 

 fishermen, that the United States' fishermen have any other, and still less that they 

 have any greater, rights than the British fishermen had at the date of the Treaty. 



"If, then, at the date of the signature of the Treaty of Washington certain restraints 

 were, by the municipal law, imposed upon the British fishermen, the United States' 

 fishermen were, by the express terms of the Treaty, equally subjected to those restraints 

 and the obligation to observe in common with the British the then existing local laws 

 and regulations, which is implied by the words 'in common,' attached to the United 

 States' citizens as soon as they claimed the benefit of the Treaty." 



Under the view thus forcibly expressed, the British Government would be con- 

 sistent in claiming that all regulations and limitations upon the exercise of the right of 

 fishing upon the Newfoundland coast, which were in existence at the time when the 

 Treaty of 1818 was made, are now binding upon American fishermen. 



Farther than this, His Majesty's Government cannot consistently go, and, farther 

 than this, the Government of the United States cannot go. 



For the claim now asserted that the Colony of Newfoundland is entitled at will 

 to regulate the exercise of the American Treaty right is equivalent to a claim of power 

 to completely destroy that right. This Government is far from desiring that the 

 Newfoundland fisheries shall go unregulated. It is willing and ready now, as it has 

 always been, to join with the Government of Great Britain in agreeing upon all reason- 

 able and suitable regulations for the due control of the fishermen of both countries 

 in the exercise of their rights, but this Government cannot permit the exercise of these 

 rights to be subject to the will of the Colony of Newfoundland. The Government 

 of the United States cannot recognize the authority of Great Britain or of its Colony 



