The Behring Sea and Newfoundland Fisheries Question: Interview with a Newfoundland Judge: [Reuters Special Services]: Sir Robert J. Pinsent, Puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, who is at present on a visit to this country, was interviewed yesterday by a representative of Reuter’s Agency on the subject of the Fisheries dispute. Sir Robert is perhaps one of the best living authorities on these questions. He has long been familiar with them in all their phases, both in a judicial and in a legislative capacity. The articles contributed by him to the leading British newspapers and reviews gave to the controversy a popular interest in England and imparted to the British public a degree of knowledge upon the subject which they had never had before. Sir Robert’s judgment in the historic case of Baird v. Sir Baldwin Walker, upon which there was an appeal to the Privy Council, was confirmed the other day. Speaking of the French claims to the Newfoundland fisheries, Sir Robert said, “I can claim to be as high an authority as anybody upon the Fisheries question, which so gravely concerns; the interests and destinies of Newfoundland, and which is a very much more important subject than the Behring Sea question, having regard to the extent and value of British rights and prosperity affected by it. The Modus Vivendi between France and Great Britain in reference to the rights of lobster fishing and canning will shortly expire with the statute which gives it legal force; and an intimation has been given that since the local Legislature of Newfoundland declines to pass the permanent Act which contemplates arbitration, the Imperial Parliament will shortly be asked to adopt one. I regret to say that this branch of the difficulty, standing alone, is fast becoming, if it has not already become, one of little importance, and hardly calling for so formal and costly an adjustment. The lobster industry is rapidly dying out and ceasing to be remunerative, by reason of the depletion of the breeding-grounds. On that part of the coast where the French Possess treaty rights this branch of the Newfoundland fisheries is subject to no control by the Fisheries Commission or by the Legislature of Newfoundland or France, and consequently, as in the case of the fur-bearing seals of the Behrjng Sea, it would seem much more desirable that an agreement for the preservation of the lobster and the resuscitation of the industry should be arrived at in the interests of all parties than that a prolonged diplomatic fight should take place over it. What legislation and diplomacy should be directed to is the final solution of a situation which mars the wellbeing of an important British colony. The time must be rapidly approaching when the French treaty question will again come on the tapis.” Sir Robert then proceeded to deal with the Behring Sea dispute, with regard to which he said, “In Newfoundland we have no direct concern in this controversy. Of course, we sympathize with the claims of our fellow subjects in Canada, particularly with such of our people – and there is quite a number of them – who have migrated to British Columbia and there engaged ill the seal-fishery of the North Pacific. Moreover, abounding in great, and wide, and deep bays as the Island of Newfoundland does, we cannot but feel a deep interest in the ultimate issue of this controversy as a matter of principle. As a question of international law, if there be any practical meaning in the term, I fail to comprehend by what perversion or violation of its general principles the claim of the United States can be justified or sustained. The Salisbury-Blaine correspondence, in which the ‘tacking and filling’ on the American side disgusted even its own respectable press, has only to be read to convince the rational reader of the hollowness of the contention that the Behring Sea differs in any respect from other great public waters of the same kind, or that different principles are capable of being applied to is. That Mr. Blaine, with characteristic industry, expended infinite pains upon his correspondence, and taxed his ingenuity to the utmost to make out a case, there can be no doubt; but his exuberant verbosity utterly failed to explain away the position of which the United States had in other cases been the champion, not only in contests with Great Britain but with Russia herself upon the question of this very Behring Sea and its seal fishery. From another point of view and upon the assumption of common international rights there can be no doubt that the manner of using this great sea for the prosecution of the industries affords us a very fit subject for either agreement or settlement by arbitration, to the award of which all the nations interested should be bound. It is manliest that the unregulated use of Behring Sea for the ‘capture of seals must lead to the destruction and extinction of a valuable public property and will be especially damaging to the commercial interests of the United States in their legitimate territories and rights of property in and around that sea. Even in regard to the North Atlantic seal fishery, mainly prosecuted from Newfoundland, it has been found expedient to establish legal restrictions upon the times and methods of its prosecution so as to prevent reckless destruction and possible extinction. There, of course, the seal is of a different character and is mainly valuable for its oil and for its skins as leather, not as a very valuable fur as the Pacific seal is, and the number, moreover, is immense, and not measurably exhaustible. With the North Pacific seal this is not so, and early extinction must follow the uncontrolled pursuit of the industry which attends its capture.” WASHINGTON, January 13: – A definite agreement has been arrived at between the parties interested in the Behring Sea question. The meeting of arbitrators on February 23 next will be of a purely informal character, and an adjournment will be made until some date in May or June, when the arbitration will be proceeded with.
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Referenced
GRO0747 Hennock: Robert John Pinsent: 1834 – 1893