4S8 APPENDIX 



to determine whether American citizens shall fish on Sunday. The Government of 

 Newfoundland cannot be permitted to make entry and clearance at a Newfoundland 

 custom-house and the payment of a tax for the support of Newfoundland lighthouses 

 conditions to the exercise of the American right of fishing.- If it be shown that these 

 things are reasonable the Government of the United States will agree to them, but it 

 cannot submit to have them imposed upon it without its consent. This position is 

 not a matter of theory. It is of vital and present importance, for the plain object of 

 recent legislation of the Colony of Newfoundland has been practically to destroy the 

 value of American rights under the Treaty of 1818. Those rights are exercised in 

 competition with the fishermen and merchants of Newfoundland. The situation of 

 the Newfoundland fishermen residing upon the shore and making the shore their base 

 of operations, and of the American fishermen coming long distances with expensive 

 outfits, devoting long periods to the voyage to the fishing grounds and back to the 

 market, obliged to fish rapidly in order to make up for that loss of time, and making 

 ships their base of operations, are so different that it is easy to frame regulations which 

 will offer slight inconvenience to the dwellers on shore and be practically prohibitory 

 to the fishermen from the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts; and, if the grant of this 

 competitive right is to be subject to such laws as our competitors choose to make, it 

 is a worthless right. The Premier of Newfoundland in his speech in the Newfound- 

 land Parliament, delivered on the 12th April, 1905, in support of the Foreign Fishing 

 Bill, made the following declaration : — ■ 



"This Bill is framed specially to prevent the American fishermen from coming 

 into the bays, harbours, and creeks of the coast of Newfoundland for the purpose of 

 obtaining herring, caplin, and squid for fishing purposes." 



And this further declaration : — 



"This communication is important evidence as to the value of the position we 

 occupy as mistress of the northern seas so far as the fisheries are concerned. Herein 

 was evidence that it is within the power of the Legislature of this Colony to make or 

 mar our competitors to the North Atlantic fisheries. Here was evidence that by 

 refusing or restricting the necessary bait supply, we can bring our foreign competitors 

 to realize their dependency upon us. One of the objects of this legislation is to bring 

 the fishing interests of Gloucester and New England to a realization of their inde- 

 pendence upon the bait supplies of this Colony. No measure could have been devised 

 having more clearly for its object the conserving, safeguarding, and protecting of the 

 interests of those concerned in the fisheries of the Colony." 



It will be observed that there is here the very frankest possible disavowal of any 

 intention to so regulate the fisheries as to be fair to the American fishermen. The 

 purpose is, under cover of the exercise of the power of regulation, to exclude the Ameri- 

 can fishermen. The Government of the United States surely cannot be expected 

 to see with complacency the rights of its citizens subjected to this kind of regulation. 



The Government of the United States finds assurance of the desire of His Majesty's 

 Government to give reasonable and friendly treatment to American fishing rights on 

 the Newfoundland coast in the statement of the Memorandum that the Newfound- 

 land Foreign Fishing- Vessels Act is not as clear and explicit as, in the circumstances, 

 it is desirable that it should be, and in the expressed purpose of His Majesty's Govern- 

 ment to confer with the Government of Newfoundland with the object of removing 

 any doubts which the Act, in its present form, may suggest as to the power of His 

 Majesty to fulfill his obligation under the Convention of 1818. It is hoped that, upon 

 this Conference, His Majesty's Government will have come to the conclusion, not 



