French Encroachments: (from the Dundee Advertiser): The Newfoundlanders are sending over to this country a deputation to lay before the Government and the public their grievances against the French Fishermen. The proposal to recognise the right of the French to erect lobster-canning establishments on the “French Shore” has evidently alarmed the colonists and some of them are demanding the abrogation of our treaties with France and the extinction of French maritime and territorial rights in Newfoundland. In an impartial review of the nature of the French fishery claims which appears in the current number of the Nineteenth Century, Mr. Justice Pinsent, one of the Newfoundland Judges, puts very clearly and fairly the issue between the colonists and the French fishermen. Mr. Justice Pinsent related the history of the connection between this country and Newfoundland from 1497, when the island, by right of discovery, became the property of the English Crown. At a very early date Spaniards, Portuguese and French began to pay attention to the fisheries. The English were somewhat neglectful of the estate to begin with. But by 1578, as appears from Haklyuyt, “the English were commonly lords of the Harbours.” In the reign of Edward VI, an Act was passed for the encouragement of the Newfoundland fishery … (continues) … The French assert that not only do they have a right to catch lobsters and carry on a canning business, but that the British have no right. To recognise this claim in the face of the protests of the colonists would be a mistake on our part, for it appears plain that the French are demanding what they are not entitled to seeing that, as Mr. justice Pinsent shows, the only fishery contemplated by the high contracting parties was the cod fishery, and the language of the treaties is utterly inapplicable to lobster catching of the erection of factories for preserving and canning lobsters.
[see also Dundee Advertiser: Monday 7th April 1890 & St. James’s Gazette 31st March 1890]
Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.
Referenced
GRO0747 Hennock: Robert John Pinsent: 1834 – 1893