INTERNATIONAL ASPECT. International fishing laws are mostly regulated by convention, and the course of their development has largely depended upon the outcome of political disputes. This is especially true of the fishing laws fixed by treaty between the United States and Great Britain, and between Great Britain and France, in New foundland and North American waters.. These played so important a part in the history of the three countries during the nineteenth century, and still present so many unsolved problems, that they demand careful consideration.
Between the United States and Great Britain the existing laws represent a working compro mise, whose history runs back to 1783. In that year the Treaty of Paris, which acknowledged the independence of the United States, provided that American fishermen should continue to enjoy the right to fish in the waters of the British posses sions in America, but forbade them to dry or cure fish on the coast of Newfoundland and in settled bays, harbors. and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, unless by vions agreement with the inhabitants or sors thereof. This arrangement continued iu force until 1818, although, during the negotia tions preceding the Treaty of Ghent of 1814, the views of the American and British commissioners clashed so decidedly on the interpretation of fish ing rights under the Treaty of Paris that the question was ignored, as otherwise the Treaty of Ghent might not have been concluded. The superior value of the British-Canadian waters had attracted a considerable number of American fishermen, who had established themselves in the advantageous places for curing and drying fish; and the British Government, antici• pating the effect of what they considered an undue advantage, held that the War of 1812 hail abrogated the fishing rights fixed by the Treaty of Paris. By the Convention of London of 18IS the United States renounced for American fisher men the liberty of fishing, subject to certain exceptions, within three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors of the British dominions in America, except the right of enter ing bays or harbors for purposes of shelter, and of obtaining wood and water.
During the succeeding thirty-six years different constructions were put upon these provisions, and seizures of American fishing-vessels were made for trespassing within the three-mile limit. All these difficulties were, however, removed for a time by the Treaty of Washington of 1854, bet ter known as the Reciprocity Treaty, by which mutual restrictions as to sea fisheries, excepting shell-fish, were done away with, and each country was granted full enjoyment of the sea-fishing grounds of the other. The termination of this treaty in 1S66 by notice of the United States Government placed the whole question back again in the position established by the Convention of London, in which it continued until the Treaty of Washington in 1871 restored the mutual fish ing privileges of the Reciprocity Treaty. In the treaty of 1871 provision was made for referring to arbitration the question of the greater value of Canadian fishing-waters, and by the Halifax Commission of 1377 an award of $5,500.000 was made in favor of the Dominion of Canada. This treaty, which went into operation in 1873, was terminated in 1885 according to notice given by the United States Government. The extent of the renunciation made by that government as ex pressed in the Convention of London was again thrown open to opposite interpretations, and, several American fishing-vessels having been seized. Congress in 1887 passed a retaliatory law authorizing the President, at his discretion, to close American ports to Canadian vessels and merchandise. The discretion was never exer cised. In 1888 another attempt to compose these differences was made by the Chamberlain-Bayard Treaty, which was rejected by the United States Senate; hut a modus wirendi pending ratification was offered by the British commissioners, and an act of the Dominion Parliament in 1890 enacted this temporary arrangement into law.