R
16883.
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
TLC.O.885
No. 69.
(NEWFOUNDLAND.)
LAW OFFICERS to COLONIAL OFFICE.
[Questions as to the construction of and the powers conferred by, the Anglo-French Convention Act, 1904.]
MY LORD,
Royal Courts of Justice,
May 9, 1907. WE were honoured by your Lordship's commands, signified to us by Mr. Ber- tram Cox in his letter of the 2nd January last, stating that he was directed by your Lordship to acknowledge the receipt of our letter* in which we advised:-
(1) that the modus vivendi concluded with the United States Government on the Newfoundland fisheries question was a treaty, but that
(2) any rights and privileges which that instrument might convey to inhabitants
of the United States in excess of those granted by the Convention of 1818 were not covered by the various clauses in the Newfoundland Acts safeguarding rights granted by treaty, since, in our opinion, the clauses referred to only applied to rights under treaties in existence when the Acts in question were passed.
That since two of the three Newfoundland Acts mentioned in the reference of the 10th November as safeguarding rights granted by the Treaty were passed, viz., the Bait Act and the Marine and Fisheries Act, the French rights of fishery in the waters of Newfoundland had been considerably modified by the Convention con- cluded on the 8th April, 1904, and ratified on the 8th December, 1904. In particular French fishermen had become, what they were not before, subject to the Colonial Fishery Laws and Regulations as to close times and the preservation of the fisheries, and had also become entitled to exercise as of right a privilege which they had previously enjoyed only de facto, viz., that of purchasing bait on that part of the coast of Newfoundland to which the French fishery rights extended. That if, there- fore, the phrase "rights and privileges granted by Treaty" applied only to the state of things existing when each of these two Acts was passed, on the one hand the Newfoundland authorities and Courts would be debarred by the fact that the Marine and Fisheries Act, 1898, preserved the old French rights, from enforcing on French fishermen the Colonial Fishery Regulations as to close times and the preservation of the fisheries to which after three months' notice they were now subject, and that, on the other hand, there was nothing in the Bait Act to prevent the Colonial Govern- ment from so enforcing that measure as to deprive French fishermen of the bait That there was privileges to which they were entitled under the new régime. reason to believe that the Bait Act was actually so enforced at the present time; so that the question of the interpretation of the phrase rights and privileges granted by Treaty was one of immediate practical importance from the point of view of the proper discharge of His Majesty's Treaty obligations to France. That it was true that the Foreign Fishing Vessels Act, 1905, having been passed since the ratification of the Anglo-French Convention of 1904, Section 7 of that measure which safeguarded Treaty rights prevented a French fishing vessel which had pur- chased bait on the Treaty Coast from being seized and forfeited under Section 1, but that this did not remove the possibility of the Bait Act being enforced in a manner derogatory of the new French rights.
That the Convention of the 8th of April, 1904, was concluded by His Majesty and the President of the French Republic" subject to the approval of their respec- tive Parliaments," and that an Act was duly passed by the Imperial Parliament (4 Edward VII., c. 33), shortly entitled, "The Anglo-French Convention Act, 1904," Section 1 of which was in the following terms:-
*
(1) The approval of Parliament is hereby given to the Convention set out in the schedule to this Act, and it shall be lawful for His Majesty the King to do every- thing which appears to His Majesty necessary or proper for carrying into effect that Convention.
• No. 53A.
25 Wt 97 5,07 D & S 6
28464
16 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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