"The terms of the _modus vivendi_ accord to unfounded pretensions the standing of reasonable claims, and confer upon the French the actual possession and enjoyment of the rights to which these claims relate. Mr Baird refused to comply with the _modus vivendi_. Sir Baldwin Walker, commanding on the coast, landed a party of blue-jackets in 1891, and took the law into his own hands against Mr Baird, was sued for damages, and twice lost his case.[56] There had existed an Imperial Act under which Sir Baldwin Walker might have been protected, but it had been repealed when self-government was granted to Newfoundland. In the same year of 1891 a Newfoundland Act was passed, under heavy pressure from the Home Government, compelling colonial subjects to observe the instructions of the naval officers to the extent of at once quitting the French shore if directed, and the Act was to be in force till the end of 1893. The Home Government had passed a Bill through the House of Commons, and dropped it, before it received the Royal assent, only after the Prime Minister of Newfoundland had been heard at the bar of both Houses and had promised colonial legislation. The French Government have insisted that a British Act should be passed; and Lord Salisbury, while declaring that there ought to be a permanent Colonial Act, has always refused to promise a British Act. To my mind, the Newfoundland people went too far in giving up their freedom by passing the Act which I have named, an Act to which, had I been a member of the Newfoundland Legislature, nothing would have induced me to consent; and my sympathies are entirely with the Newfoundlanders in their refusal to part with their freedom, for all time, by making so monstrous a statute permanent." The _modus vivendi_ treaty was periodically renewed by the Colonial Legislature with a submissiveness which would have seemed excessive if they had not been pressed with the shibboleth of Imperial interest. At the same time, signs of restiveness were not wanting. The complaints of the Newfoundlanders became more frequent, more insistent, and more emphatic. They pointed out that the French virtually claimed a monopoly of an 800-mile shore, which was entirely British of right, that in consequence they interfered with the development of the mining industry, and the extension of railways, and that thereby they were seriously hampering the progress of the colony. The case put forward by the colonists was historically strong, and there was much to be said for the contention that they were entitled to everything they claimed: on any view they could rightly complain of a cruel injustice, so long as the indolence or incompetence of English diplomacy suffered a debatable land to survive in the teeth of an undebatable argument.