237 



*' The note of Lord Aberdeen of the 15th of April last is confined 

 exclusively to the case of the Washington ; and it accordingly be- 

 comes the duty of the undersigned again to invite his lordship's at- 

 tention to the correspondence above referred to between Mr. Steven- 

 son and Lord Palmerston, and to request that inquiry may be made, 

 without unnecessary delay, into all the causes of complaint which have 

 been made by the American government against the improper inter- 

 ference of the British colonial authorities with the fishing vessels of the 

 United States. 



" In reference to the case of the Washington, Lord Aberdeen, in 

 his note of the 15th of April, justifies her seizure by an armed provin- 

 cial vessel, on the assumed fiict that, as she was found fishing in the 

 Bay of Fundy, she was within the limits from which the fishing vessels 

 of the United States are excluded by the provisions of the convention 

 between the two countries of October, 1818. 



" The undersigned had remarked, in his note of the 10th of August last, 

 on the impropriety of the conduct of the colonial authorities in proceed- 

 ing in reference to a question of construction of a treaty pending between 

 the two countries, to decide the question in their own favor, and in vir- 

 tue of that decision to order the capture of the vessels of a friendly 

 State. A summary exercise of power of this kind, the undersigned is 

 sure, would never be resorted to by her Majesty's government, except 

 in an extreme case, while a negotiation was in train on the point at 

 issue. Such a procedure, on the part of a local colonial authority, is, 

 of course, highly objectionable, and the undersigned cannot but again 

 invite the attention of Lord Aberdeen to this view of the subject. 



*' With respect to the main question of the right of American vessels to 

 fish within the acknowledged limits of the Bay of Fundy, it is neces- 

 sary, for a clear understanding of the case, to go back to the treaty of 

 17 S3. 



" By this treaty it was provided that the citizens of the United States 

 should be allowed 'to take fish of every kind on such part of the coast 

 of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use, (but not to dry or cure 

 the same on that island,) and also on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all 

 other of his Britannic Majesty's dominions in America, and that the 

 American fishermen shall have liberty to dry and cure fish in any 

 of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalene 

 islands, and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but 

 so soon as the same or either of them shall be settled, it shall not be 

 lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement with- 

 out a previous agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, propri- 

 etors, or possessors of that ground.' 



" These privileges and conditions were in reference to a country of 

 which a considerable portion was then unsettled, likely to be attended 

 with differences of opinion as to what should, in the progress of time, be 

 accounted a settlement from which American fishermen might be exclu- 

 ded. These differences in fact arose, and by the year 1818 the state of 

 things was so far changed that her Majesty's government thought it neces- 

 saiy, in negotiating the convention of that year, entirely to except the 

 province of Nova Scotia from the number of the places which might be 

 Irequented by Americans as being in part unsettled, and to provide that 



