NEWFOUNDLAND A FRENCH COLONY!

Taranaki Herald, Volume VII, Issue 344, 5 March 1859, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEWFOUNDLAND A FRENCH COLONY!

FISHING IN TROUBLFD WATERS.

[From the Liverpool Albion, Ist November.]

What with the Imperial tri-colour floating from the Duke of Malakoff's residence in London, within sight of the head of the House of Guclph, and flouting our ancient ally, head of the House of Biaganza, in his own waters of the Tagns, we are beginning to receive some inklings of that reciprocity all on one side of which it was said that the entente cordiale of the coup d'etat, would prove to be made up. Further evidence of the like pleasant truth is pouring upon us, and one of our oldest and most favorite colonies is crying aloud that it is being converted into a French dependency. While British legislators were alarming themselves about the terrors of Cheibourg, which at any rate will not move from its place, and, reassuring themselves with the intelligence that the Atlantic cable was laid, were exclaiming that henceforth all danger of war on the other side had vanished for ever, an event was happening that shows up Cherbourg as a mask and the peaceful consequences of the telegraph as an imposture. France was taking posscssiou of an English colony. Louis Napoleon sent out, through that very telegraph an order to his nat .il commander off the coast of Newfoundland to give notice to the in. habitants of St. George's Bay that they were no longer to be allowed to exercise the rights which, from 1713 to 1783, had been shared by them only with British subjects, of fishing and using the strand for fishery purposes, and which, since the latter dote, they have exercised in concurrence with the French.

The Colonial office, as we are informed by itself, in a conespondence with the metropolitan association for the discussion of foreign topics, which appeared in a London morning journal, lias no information of any such notice, and the Admiralty declares that such matters belong to the Foreign Office. The English of this is, that the 2000 inhabitants of St. George's Bay are to be reduced to pauperism, and that the island of Newfoundland is to be ceded to France ; or rather that it is already offered as a bone of contention between Fiance and the United States ; a condition of things which would have been arrived at a year ago but for the clear-sightedness and unanimity of the colonists. A London journal devoted to colonial subjects, re-produces, on Wednesday last, the following : —

" Great excitement prevails with respect to the French encroachments on the fisheries, and it is alleged that they are acting upon the convention into which Lord Clarendon and Mr Labouchere weie entrapped by the French Government, although disallowed by the Colonial Legislature, and never even submitted to the Imperial Parliament. In support of this apprehension, it is pointed out that the convention has been published in the Moniteur as if in full force, and that the Fiench fishermen are acting on this pioclamation." As this dismemberment of the Empire is not to take place sub silentio, but, on the contrary, will occasion a good deal of ruin and bloodshed our readers will perhaps thank us for a brief outline of the case.

Newfoundland was discovered by Sebastian Cabot then in the service ot Henry VII., and after attempts on both sides at colonisation, much hindered by the wars between the two nations, was ceded by France to England in full sovereignty at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. At the same time liberty of fishing was given on certain portions of the coast, to the French. The French nearly half a century later, attempted to prove that liberty to fish meant right to prevent the British from fishing. Lord Chatham however, through the British Ambassador, Lord Stormount, successfully repelled this attempt at encroachment. The Treaty of Paris (1763) concluded a war with France, and restored the 13th article of the treaty of Utrecht as regarded Newfoundland. The sovereignty being exclusively British, the right of the French was merely a treaty right, and fell into abeyance in every war, to the gieat advantage of the inhabitants of Newfoundland, whoso primary claim to their own fisheries became more imperative, but was tieated with more and moie neglect as the increase of the population converted what had been a fishing station into a colony. The prosperity of Newfoundland bas consequently always suffered on the re.establishment of peace. In 1783 the American war was brought to a close by the Treaties of Versailles.. The French found their position considerably improved. In return for a cession of their rights on a part of the eastern coast, they obtained tbe use of an additional portion of the west, including that very St. George's Bay winch is now the seat of their most recent aggression. .No mention was made, however of any exclusive right on their part. On the contrary, their right to fish in their new and old allotments was to be enjoyed "as they have a right to enjoy that which was assigned to them by the Treaty of Utrecht." To this treaty, however, was appended a declaration that "His Britannic Majesty will take the most positive measures for preventing hie subjects from interrupting in any manner, ,by their competition, the fishery of the -French during the temporary exercise .of it, which is granted by them upon the coast of the island of Newfoundland." This treaty was negotiated, as we are informed by its Annex, by the mediation of the Empress of all the Russia?. In 1814 and 1815 this treaty was renewed. In 1818 it received a .clear interpretation by a new treaty with

[I the United States, which. conferred on their citizens the liberty to fish on the best.portion of. the French, shore.

Against this treaty the French have never protested ; and it is therefore impossible for them to claim an exclusive right, which in the first place, they never possessed, and which if they had possessed, they must be held to have given away. In 183 i, by the Treaty of Washington, the Americans were admitted to fish on all the coast of Newfoundland. Newfoundland having now a Legislative Assembly, its consent was stipulated in the treaty as a necessary preliminary to its enforcement. The, French claim of exclusive right was now trebly barred: — 1. They have never received it. 2. A concurrent right was possessed by the Americans. 1 . The right of the colony was established to a veto on all future treaties.

Meantime the French had been making constant encroachments, and in many places did not scruple to use force to prevent the British from exercising their concurrent right. It is to be supposed that this iv as done under pretence of the words, already, quoted, " interrupt by their competition," which it is clear do not apply unless the British attempt to occupy space which the French are thus prevented, from occupying. But not a single scrap of paper has been published by the Home Government respecting the negociations which have taken place between England and France. Newfoundland Parliamentary papers, however, inform us that Lord Palmerston once wrote a despatch denying that the French had any exclusive right. It is singular that in no printed document that we have bei"n fortunate enough to peruse is anything said about the time when the temporary exercise of the French rights is to cease. Nothing can be clearer than that if the one part of the declaration holds, the other must; and before the Governor of Newfoundland can be called on by the French to prevent their fishery from being interrupted by competition, they must inform him when they are gome to clear out altogether.

The French claim being thus put entirely out of court, the next step of the truly British Minister was to hand over, not only what was but what was never claimed. On the 14th January, 1857, a treaty was signed between England and France. Article 1 gives the French exclusive right to fish on the whole of the " French shore," except the least valuable portion of it. Article 3 confers on them a concurrent right of fishing on the coast of Labrador. Article 11 givei the French naval officers the right of cruising from on shore to prevent any but the French from enjoying the use of the strand. Article 20 stipulates that the treaty is null without the consent of the colony. Not one man in Newfoundland was found to accept the treaty. It was rejected as destructive to the colony, and denounced as treason to the British Empire. On the 11th of April, 1857, Louis Napoleon announced the treaty by an imperial deciee in tht ifonitenr. A short time afterwards, Mr Labouchere announced in the House of Commons that the treaty was null and void. In August 1858, the French commandant put the tieaty in force. In exact accordance with Article 11, he gives notice that he will, next season, prevent the inhabitants of St. George's Bay ftom fishing or using the strand for fishery purposes. He gives this, not to the Governor, to whom he must have given any notice of an intention to put a new construction on the treaty of 1783, but to a local magistrate, according to the provisions of the abrogated treaty. No measures appear to have been taken to resist this aggression, or to demand reparation for this insult. It appears, therefore, that Lord Derby accepts the legacy left him by his predecessor, and that Newfoundland must henceforth be comidered as a French colony.

Prince Napoleon's Visit to Warsaw.-— The Augsburg Gazette learns from Warsaw that the Prince Napoleon was not more than three minutes alone with the Emperor Alexander, but the Czas tells a very different story. The Cracow paper affirms that the Czar and his guest were closeted together for an hour and a half, and that the countenance of the French Piince was quite radiant when he quitted the Russian monarch. lam inclined to believe that the information received by the Augsburg Gazette ii the more correct, as reliable intelligence has reached me that the manner of the Emperor Alexander towards Prince Napoleon was extremely civil, "but very cool." His Imperial Highness did not invite the Czar to go to Paris, but he told him that he had been sent by the Emperor Napoleon to return the visit of the Grand Duke Constantine. The Prince only called on one Polish nobleman, and to him he observed that he was greatly struck by the magnificence of the palaces of the nobles, and by the miserable huts inhabited by the serfs. The prevalent opinion in Warsaw is that no political importance is to be attaohed >o the visit of Prince Napoleon. It was when driving from the Belvidere Palace to the White House in the Lazienski Park that the Emperor and his French guest were alone. When his Majesty went to the manoeuvre, to the grand " chasse" tt Natolin, to the festival at Villanoff, and to the Grand Parade, hit 6ole companion in the carriage was the Grand Duke of Weimar.